ELIMINATING ACCENT

Introduction

Congratulations! You’ve just made a step in the right direction, toward your goal of eliminating your accent.

Let’s face it, it doesn’t matter if you have a master’s or bachelor’s degree, whether you are a doctor, a nurse, or a house mom; an accent will create prejudices when you are meeting people. People around you might not judge you consciously, but it’s commonly known that the first impression is the most important one. Consider how you think about people that have an accent speaking your mother tongue. Don’t you tend to think less of people who have accents, kind of labeling them as less smart and sophisticated? When it comes to languages, it really doesn’t matter who you are or what kind of career you pursue, an accent will make things harder.

About This Book

What you are about to read is entirely based on my experience. I’m not a teacher and not a professional writer, but the message and methods of this book are simple. If you are willing to get rid of your accent, this book should provide you with all the necessary techniques you need in order to achieve your goal. Follow the methods I’m about to teach you, and I am sure you can eliminate your accent.

However, this is not a grammar book and I’m not going to lecture you on when to use who or whom. I don’t know your background, whether you have already lived in the US for quite some time, or you still live abroad. Neither do I know how long you’ve been studying English grammar. You don’t need to have a huge vocabulary or a very deep knowledge of grammar to start with, but the more you know the easier it will be.

I do recommend buying a grammar reference book, or if you have trouble with English grammar, a grammar book with exercises could already be a great help. You could, of course, take a few English lessons at a local community college provided that you have the time and money. But again, if you know the basic rules you should be fine for now. Besides that, using this book to work on your accent will also have positive effects on your vocabulary and deepen your grammar knowledge. It’s really a two-way street: study grammar and your speaking skills will get better; work on your speaking skills and you will become more familiar with the rules of English grammar.

I’m sure you’ve heard people talk about, and maybe already experienced, the difficulty of learning new things above a certain age. I, however, strongly believe that it does not matter how old you are, if you have the determination and ambition to learn something new you will achieve this and any other goal. Granted getting rid of an accent may be a more challenging task the older you get, but do not limit yourself with this kind of thinking. Drop the negative attitude and believe in yourself.

Whenever you are working on eliminating your accent, the one thing you have to keep in mind is patience. Sounding entirely American will take time. It has taken me several years to come this far. You’ll most likely notice some changes almost immediately after starting with the methods described in this book, but completely getting rid of your accent will take time. So be patient and keep working.

Also, people might not point out that your English is getting better right away because not everybody listens too carefully. The changes will be so graduate that your family and friends might not even notice the transition. Don’t let this discourage you. You’ll be surprised how people who haven’t spoken to you in a while will react when they’ll hear you speak.

About This Author

For me this book is kind of a big deal. See I, myself, did not grow up speaking English. Even though I had dreamed of going to the United States for a long time, it wasn’t until my early teen years that I started to teach myself English. I went all out and tried many different things. I found some good methods and some that didn’t work at all. The techniques in this book may not be methods that have been scientifically researched, but they worked for me, so they can work for you too.

Today, I am very proud of myself because I’ve truly achieved my goal of not just mastering the English language, but having an authentic American accent. I knew that I had reached my goal when people started asking me if I had lived in California my whole life.

Along the way, teachers as well as my fellow foreign students have been amazed, asking me how I’ve managed to have such an authentic accent. I shared my secrets and experiences with them and they were surprised how simple the things are I did to get rid of my accent.

Thanks to all my experience with this topic, I think I know what works and what doesn’t and with this book I would like to pass on this knowledge to as many people as possible. It doesn’t matter where you’re from, whether your native language is Spanish, Russian, Chinese, or French, if you are willing to invest your time and make a real effort, the methods and techniques will work for you too.

Step 1 - Self-Confidence This, of course, is not a self-help book for people with low self-confidence so you might be surprised to find a chapter about self-confidence in this book.

First of all, I hope that you are a happy and positive person, but what you are going to need before you actually start to do further exercises is self-confidence. The self-confidence to make mistakes, to feel comfortable learning new things, and letting go of old things. This might sound like an easy thing to do for some people, but…

…have you ever been ashamed to ask for help in a store because you didn’t know the right word?

…have you ever felt embarrassed because you didn’t know what somebody just said, so you just nodded along?

Certainly, you could go on living like this for the rest of your live, but that isn’t going to be very comfortable or convenient, is it? Wouldn’t you be happier if you didn’t have to worry about sounding stupid or being judged for your accent?

What To Do

You’re going to have times when everything will go incredibly well and times when you might question if making the effort is even worth it. Having a healthy self-confidence in times like that is essential. Tell yourself that you can and will make it happen. As the first step, to affirm you goal, I want you to say to yourself three times a day:

I am a self-confident person and I speak American English without an accent.

Don’t just say it thoughtlessly. Believe it and visualize yourself having succeeded. You might feel strange at first but trust me, keep repeating it and your brain will have no choice but to accept the statement above as the truth.

In case you are a religious person, you might want to reaffirm the goal of losing your accent in your prayers. Assuming that you feel comfortable enough doing so.

Mistakes Do Happen

Sometimes we hesitate when we are insecure about saying something and end up not saying anything at all because somebody might think we are stupid. The downside to this kind of attitude is that you might just be missing a lesson. You should never have to feel ashamed.

If you feel you know something just come forward and say it.

If you are being asked something and you do not know the answer just say that you don’t know.

Practice this! Become aware of when you are fearful of making a mistake. Don’t let your negative thinking hold you back. Speak up!

Most of the time you’ll be right anyway, plus it will reaffirm a word or term you’ve been feeling insecure about. Also, in case you are still doubtful of whether you’ve made a mistake, have to confidence to ask your friends or colleagues “Did I just say that right?” or “Did I use the right word?” People will admire your effort and concern with the language. From that point on, they’ll probably feel more comfortable pointing out errors you might make.

Worrying About Other People

We tend to worry too much about what other people might think about us. Are you afraid that your family might ridicule you because you are making an effort to lose your accent? I understand the feeling. You’re concerned about how people might react to the new you. It’s similar to having gotten your hair cut and wondering if people are going to like it. We have all been there.

The best and most valuable advice anybody can give you is: Let go! Stop caring what your parents, neighbors, friends, or complete strangers think about you. Let them talk because you are doing a great thing. You’ve recoginzed that you have something to improve about yourself and aren’t afraid to do so. Do this for yourself and you’ll get a huge reward.

How This Step Will Benefit You

If you want to eliminate your accent you’re going to have to let go of old habits and step out of the comfort zone. This can be hard and quite difficult, after all, not everybody likes changes. It’s perfectly okay to even be afraid of changes, but in order to reach your goal you’re going to have to just go ahead and make things happen. Many things in your life depend on your attitude. Start this new accent-free chapter of your life feeling comfortable, secure, and with an open mind. Self-confidence may very well be the key to your success.

Making these adjustments and learning that it’s perfectly okay to make mistakes will help you greatly in reaching your goal. Always try to make this learning process as pleasant and enjoyable as possible. Have fun doing what you do and you’ll see that getting rid of your accent will be easier than you could have ever imagined.

Additional Help

Give yourself enough time to develop a healthy and confident attitude. In case you feel that you need more advise on how to let go of negative habits and overcoming fear, go to a bookstore and find a book or two about this important topic. There are great books out there that can really help you. In Appendix 1 you’ll find a few titles I have read myself and that have been very beneficial to me.

Step 2 - Think It Now that you’ve got the right attitude let’s stay inside the head a little bit longer. One of my secrets that’s painfully obvious once you think about it is:

In order to master a language you do not only have to speak it but you need to think it too!

Think about it. What separates you from all the American people out there communicating without accents? That’s right, all their thoughts are in English. So if you want to speak as well as native English speakers do, you need to copy them. Start thinking in English, RIGHT NOW! Don’t wait a second longer and waste any more time. Now is the perfect time to start.

What To Do

What sounds rather simple is more difficult than you might imagine. It will definitely take some time to completely switch your thoughts from one language to the other.

To begin with, try thinking simple things in English. Instead of thinking “I’m hungry” in your language, do it in English. If that doesn’t work or is too difficult you can always read this book. When you’re doing that you automatically think in English since you are reading along inside your head. Even once you’ve gotten used to thinking in English you’ll notice that when reacting to sudden or surprising situations, you’ll tend to fall back into your mother tongue. Every time that happens try to repeat the same thing in English a few times, engraving the new expression.

After having gotten used to thinking in English, start being aware of how you “pronounce” things inside your head. Make sure your thoughts don’t have accents!

When you’re alone at home or in your car try to think out loud whenever you feel like it. Instead of thinking: “I have to pick up my clothes at the dry cleaner’s,” why not just say it out loud. Talking to yourself when you’re alone might seem a bit weird and strange unless you already do it, but there really is no need to think it is odd because you are just voicing your thoughts. So think of it as thinking out loud, rather than talking to yourself.

This step might be more difficult if you haven’t spoken English for a very long time or if you spent most of your life speaking another language. Nonetheless, you should be able to convert your thoughts into English by doing this step-by-step, slowly making room for the new language. Allow yourself the time to get accustomed to it.

How This Step Will Benefit You

You might ask yourself if thinking in English is absolutely necessary. After all, you want to learn how to speak, not how to think without an accent.

The point of thinking in English is to separate it from any other language you may speak. I’m sure back when you started learning English you often based similar grammar rules and terms on your native language. Although, this makes sense when you are starting to learn a new language, it is actually a reason why people have accents. I’m sure that in your mother tongue many letters are pronounced in a very different way, so you are never going to get rid of your accent, unless you stop basing one language on the other. You have to completely accept English and let it sink in. This is a crucial process if you want to succeed. Accept the new language in your mind and make English part of you and not something alien.

Additional Help

In the beginning, if you constantly forget about thinking in English, there’s an aid that might help you. Try wearing something that is always in your sight and will remind you to think in English. A bracelet or a ring would be perfect. In case you’re not a jewellery person, you could also wear a skin colored rubber band around your wrist. It’s subtle but you’ll know it’s there, helping you to convert your thoughts. You can also put little notes or smiley-faces in all the places you spend a lot of time, like your office, your house, or your car.

Step 3 - Watch TV Yes, I’m serious. TV has been a great help for me in getting rid of my accent. It won’t come as a surprise that in order to benefit from it you’ll have to watch TV in English. Plus, just idly staring at the screen won’t give you the best results. Again, we are copying native English speakers who naturally have no choice but to watch TV in English.

Maybe you have heard that Swedish people speak English quite well and with only minor accents. This is not only because there language has some similarities to English but it’s also because American TV shows aren’t translated into Swedish.

What’s great about this is that almost everybody has a TV and let’s admit it, we all have our shows that we love watching. So rather that looking at this exercise as work you can look at it as something enjoyable. Thus, you’ll be more eager to practice.

What To Do

While it would already help you a great deal if you would just watch American TV shows, to maximize the positive effects we want to take it a step further.

For starters, pick a TV show that you really like to watch. Personally, I recommend sitcoms because there language is usually simpler and easier to understand. It would be best to buy some Episodes of your favorite TV show on DVD, since you’ll be able to practice whenever you like. In Appendix 2, you’ll find a selection of my favorite shows that I have used with success to get rid of my accent over the years. Of course, watching or taping a series with your VCR when it airs on TV is fine as well. After having selected the right show, activate the subtitles or print out a transcript of the episode from the Internet. They are available for almost every TV show. This is an important step as you’ll need to see the words along with hearing them.

There are a few different methods you can do with your TV. In the beginning, I don’t recommend that you repeat everything they’re saying. This is usually more difficult than you might imagine, especially if the dialog is very fast-paced. In the end, you’ll probably just hurriedly mumble the lines.

A better approach is to pick a few sentences or scenes that seem most useful to you and work with those. Play those scenes and listen carefully. Don’t look at the words just yet, close your eyes and listen. Freeze the DVD and repeat out loud what you’ve heard, still without looking at the transcript. Just imitate the sounds exactly like what you hear from the TV. Do this over and over again until it sounds right and you can repeat the sentence or scene without an accent. When you’re sure you got it correct, look at the lines and read them out loud. Watch your pronunciation very carefully. The point of not looking at the lines first, is that it is easier to just imitate a sound. Doing this exercise, you learn how to create the right sound first, without having the letters distract you.

You can repeat this exercises as many times and on as many scenes as you want. It works with every TV program out there. If you work with this method regularly, you’ll quickly make improvements.

How This Step Will Benefit You

You can see that doing something simple like repeating lines from a TV show can have tremendous positive effects.

Next time you’ll try to say one of the words you learned with this exercise you will remember the sound, thus speaking without an accent. Not only is imitating and remembering the sound of a word easier but it will also prevent you from speaking with an accent, because you learn the right pronunciation without having the letters in front of you. Most other methods work the other way around. You look at a sentence or dialog and have to say it out loud. This can be confusing, especially if you are not yet familiar with sounds peculiar to English.

Most other similar books would provide you with Audio CD’s with sentences to repeat. I believe that you can do the same thing even better with TV. Plus, it offers some additional benefits:

The English spoken on TV is much more natural than that on some pre-recorded CD

If you pick a movie or show you would watch anyway, you’ll find working on eliminating your accent more enjoyable

You can specifically pick topics that will be most beneficial to you. For example if you are a nurse you could train with a TV show like Emergency Room.

There are TV shows about almost every topic out there, so pick what suits you and your needs best.

Another advantage, and quite a big one too, is that by eliminating your accent through TV, you’ll learn all the common slang expressions that you normally wouldn’t learn from a regular exercise or a grammar book. In order to sound American it is crucial that you are familiar with slang with its idiomatic expressions. I’m fairly certain that in American English slang is more commonly used than in any other language, especially in everyday conversations.

Additional Help

I can imagine that most people would feel more comfortable doing this step by themselves without anybody listening or judging them; however, you still need to have control over what needs to be improved in your speech. The best tool in order to do that would be a little tape recorder. You’ll be able to tape yourself while practicing and then analyze where you need to work on yourself. Additionally, a tape recorder will be useful in other exercises from this book. If you don’t want to buy one, you can also just have a friend helping you or be your own judge and listen very carefully to your own pronunciation.

In case you personally do not like TV, this step works with other media too. Most similar to TV would be performing the exact same exercise with movies. Listening to and repeating the lines from radio talk shows is another option. This is especially useful if you have a long commute. You could just repeat what the voices on air are saying. However, you won’t be able to have a transcript in front of you.

For very low-tech people, you might want to consider having a native English speaker reading lines from a book for you. Step 4 - Create Situations Studying at home to improve your English may be the first step, but the real challenge lies in speaking without an accent in every thinkable situation that you could encounter throughout any day.

As soon as you have made some progress working on your accent with the previous steps, it is time to create and practice with some fictional everyday situations to incorporate the knowledge you’ve gained into your daily life. This is an important step between preparing and rehearsing at home and speaking an accent free English in everyday situations.

What To Do

Basically, this exercise is very simple:

Pretend you are in a specific real-life situation.

You might have heard of preparation courses for possible emergencies, like earthquakes or hurricanes. In this step, you’ll essentially do the same thing, just not for emergency situations and, naturally, the focus lies on what you say, not what you do. A possible scenario could be that you need to buy a new pair of shoes at a department store, or having an appointment at the dentist.

You can either do this alone and just imagine what the other person, in the example above the sales person or dentist, would say. This requires quite a bit of imagination and you also may feel weird having a fictional conversation with yourself. If that’s the case, or if you are just not a very imaginative person, it would be best to ask a friend to do this exercise with you. I recommend choosing somebody who is close to you and is comfortable with having to point out words or terms you might mispronounce. This is an advantage of doing this exercise with a friend, you have somebody to tell you what doesn’t sound right.

For those doing this step without the help of a friend, taping everything with a small tape recorder will definitely help. If you don’t have a tape recorder and don’t want to make the investment, try to listen very carefully to what you are saying. Try to judge whether or not your pronunciation is clear and correct.

To be clear, I don’t want you to write down a bunch of lines that you memorize and then say out loud over and over again. What I want you to do is imagine a scenario, act like you are right in that situation, and make up all the lines spontaneously. It’s like acting in a play, but instead of reciting lines, you are improvising. To demonstrate how doing this might look like you can find an example below.

Scenario: You want to buy a new pair of shoes at a local department store.

A possible conversation could look something like this:

SP: Sales Person (Your Friend)

SP: Can I help you?

You: Yes, I’m looking for a pair of sneakers. Do you have the latest ones from adidas?

SP: Sorry, we don’t sell adidas, but we have just gotten the new collection from Puma. They are really nice. If you come with me, I can show them to you.

You: That would be great thanks

SP: Here you go.

You: I see, they’re very nice but I don’t really like the color. Do you have the same ones in blue?

SP: Let me check. What size are you?

You: 10

SP: Okay, just a second. … We don’t have them in blue. The colors we have are orange, blue, red, and black.

You: I’ll try the black ones then.

SP: Okay, here you go.

You: Oh, yeah, they’re very comfortable. Let me have a look in the mirror. Cool, I’ll take them.

SP: Great. Would you like to look around a bit more?

You: No, thanks that’s it.

If you can help it try not to write anything down because as soon as you do it will sound stilted and unnatural.

When doing this exercise, it is really important to just go by heart and let the words come to you. Next time you’ll be buying shoes, you won’t have notes with you either, so act along as if it were really happening. You can even practice for specific upcoming events or appointments. If you know you’ll be at a party soon, why not prepare what you will be saying.

How This Step Will Benefit You

The point of this exercise is to prepare yourself for all the situations that you might encounter tomorrow. I’ve spoken with many English students from different countries around the world. What I heard over and over again was that almost all of them knew English grammar really well, but as soon as they were confronted with daily situations their mind went blank. They hardly managed to cough up a few incoherent sentences. This is exactly what you are trying to prevent with this step.

Of course, the situations you practice will most likely differ from what you are going to experience in real life. After all, you never know how people will answer, but still I believe that preparing like this will help you greatly. Next time you encounter a situation similar to one you’ve studied before, you’ll be prepared, knowing how to answer correctly and most importantly – without an accent.

Additional Help

I’ve created quite a few situations and scenarios over the years. You can find a selection in Appendix 3, but do not limit yourself to those example scenarios. Use your imagination and write your own unique situations that will be most beneficial to you.

To keep it spontaneous, you can do what I did when I came up with this exercise. Write down all the scenarios that you think will be most helpful to you on a little piece of paper. Then throw them into a bag and pick one of the pieces without looking. The scenario you pick is the one you’ll have to do. You won’t be able to prepare yourself or think about it too long, so it will be more realistic and impulsive. Just like in the chapter before, having a friend or a tape recorder really helps and can be an aid in forming conclusions on what you need to work on.

Step 5 - Use Everyday Situations Assuming you live in the US, think about how every time you talk to a native speaker how you can benefit and practice your English. You might be part of a community or neighborhood where everybody speaks the same language you spoke in your home country. Basically, you don’t need English around your home. That is, naturally, very convenient when buying groceries or making friends, but when you are trying to eliminate your accent it can actually be counterproductive.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to ask you to give up your friends and completely abandon your neighborhood, nevertheless if you are serious about losing your accent you need to step out of the comfort zone and take advantage of all the opportunities around you.

What To Do

There are dozens of opportunities every day to have a talk with native English speakers. Up until a short time ago, you’ve probably avoided these conversations because you felt uncomfortable speaking English. Now that you feel more comfortable doing so, it’s time to take advantage of these occasions and start using you newfound knowledge.

Let’s have a look at all the places you might want to start up a conversation in order to improve your English.

Work

Work is a great place to practice your English skills. There is always something to talk about: new people, the latest gossip and obviously the work itself. I’m sure there are

many people around you who would be happy to get to know you better. Just be open and start a conversation with a co-worker.

School

School is also a very good place to get to know the people around you and converse with them, since, similar to work, there’s always something to talk about. Make some friends, hang out with them and observe how they talk. You probably have to work for school too, but try to make the best out of it by doing presentations and grouping up with your friends to do homework or work on projects. Before you even realize it, you’ll lose your accent and talk just like them.

Shopping & Restaurants

Usually, there’s not a lot of conversation when you’re shopping or eating somewhere, but there’s a potential for making conversation. Just ask the sales person where you can find something or what products they can recommend you. Some department stores offer free shopping assistants which is also a good idea to practice your skills. The possibilities are endless.

Meetings/Clubs

Do you have a special kind of interest? Do you like gardening or reading? There are discussion groups and fan clubs for virtually any topic or hobby out there. It’s a great way to observe other people’s English and to practice your own skills. Plus, you’ll meet dozens of people with the same interests. A great place to make new friends.

The Gym

Going to a gym isn’t only great for your health, but it’s also one of the best places to meet people. Just be outgoing, leave the Mp3 Player at home, and start talking to the person on the treadmill next to you. Have to courage to talk to people.

Always observe yourself while you are speaking and memorize what needs to be done better in the next chat you are going to have.

How This Step Will Benefit You

In the beginning, you might be a bit disappointed that you are still making mistakes after all that studying. This is perfectly normal because you are still in the learning process. Just keep going, learn from your mistakes, and before you know it, you’ll talk freely without an accent and not making any errors. However, you are not going to get to that point by just staying home! Go out there and meet people, use your skills but also listen carefully, so you can learn new things from them.

The most important thing to learn from this step is to talk to people and make friends. Even if you’ll never see the people you meet in these situations again, it is worth talking to them just for the sake of training your English skills. The first step in eliminating your accent may be repeating the lines from TV shows and learning how to pronounce things in the privacy of your home, but this is all in vain unless you go out there and use all the knowledge you’ve gained.

Additional Help

There are people who are naturally shy and not very outgoing. If you are one of those people, you might think going out and talking to complete strangers is very difficult. Unfortunately, there’s no getting around it. In order to lose your accent, you have to go out there and talk with people. You might find it helpful to go out with a friend who’s very open, outgoing, and talkative. Just get your friend to initiate conversations with people and start talking with them as soon as you feel comfortable. You’ll see that it’s just a matter of getting used to approaching strangers and having conversations with them.

Step 6 - Read Out Loud Remember when you went to school, that one of the things hated by almost everyone was reading out loud with the whole class listening. Most people are probably thankful that doing this is not required in most jobs. I hope you’ve overcome that fear because this is what I want you to do. Reading out loud is a great exercise if you try to get rid of your accent. I, personally, still don’t like doing it very much, but since there’s no need to do it in front of twenty people the benefits far outweigh the displeasure.

What To Do

First go to the website of a local newspaper and find an article that’s interesting. Print it out. Read through it and look up words you don’t understand. Then read the article out loud with either a friend listening, or taping it.

If a friend is helping you, make sure he or she is highlighting all the words you mispronounce while you are reading the article out loud. If you choose to do it alone, tape what you are saying. Then listen to the recordings and mark all the words you didn’t get right. Immediately after doing this, repeat the words you didn’t get right, again with your friend listening or recording it on tape. Repeat until you are sure you got the pronunciation right. You could also do this exercise without the help of a friend or a tape recorder, but it is relatively difficult to analyze what you are saying all by yourself. There are always terms that are hard to pronounce, so if you feel that you might mispronounce a specific word again, start making a list with all those words. Have a look at this list every other week and keep repeating it until you can say the words correctly.

After a month or two, it might also be helpful to repeat an article you already practiced with to see what improvements you’ve made. Look out for the words you highlighted before, as those are the terms you mispronounced last time, and check if you get them right this time. Don’t pressure yourself when you are practicing your reading skills with this exercise. This step can be quite difficult, so it’s perfectly okay to read slowly and carefully in the beginning. If you aren’t any experienced reader yet, it’s more important to say the lines clearly and pronounce them correctly. You’ll see that the more you practice the more accurate and faster you’ll be able to read the articles.

Until now you’ve worked on eliminating your accent without the help of long articles, thus reading something is still new, so don’t worry about having a more noticeable accent when you’re reading out loud. This exercise will not only help you improve your reading skills, but is also a great help in losing your accent since you take a closer look at every word you are saying than in any other step.

How This Step Will Benefit You

When you’ve reached a certain point in eliminating your accent and already feel more confident speaking, it’s crucial to start working on your reading skills. Believe me, if you can read out loud without an accent, speaking freely will seem like a piece of cake. You’ll notice the first time you are doing this exercise that reading an article is surprisingly difficult. When you see the words on a page, you tend to fall back into old patterns even though your speaking skills may have improved greatly.

Through this step, you’ll become more sensitive to the way you speak and you’ll have a higher awareness of your own pronunciation. This will help you realize when you mispronounce a word that you might have been saying wrong for a long time. Those are mostly the ones that are the hardest to correct. This kind of awareness also allows you to recognize other people’s mistakes which will prevent your from adapting their faulty pronunciation. In the long run, it’s very important that you gain this perception because at one point you want to know American English so well that you won’t need to rely on others to know right from wrong.

The reason I recommend using newspaper articles for this exercise is that they are actually more difficult to read than most books out there. So when you’ll read the article, it will be a real challenge. Plus, you’ll expand your vocabulary noticeably.

Additional Help

Naturally, if you’re having a hard time doing this exercise you can read something else than a newspaper article. You could, for example, read from a novel or a magazine. Just make sure the text is interesting and it’s a topic that you like reading about.

Another approach could be printing out a script for a TV show which you have been practicing with in Step 3. Just read the script without having the TV show play. A further advantage of working with a TV script is that if you are uncertain about the pronunciation of specific words you can play the DVD and double check it.

Step 7 - Expand Your Vocabulary

This step, on the surface, may appear not to have any effects on eliminating your accent. I’m sure that through the time you have invested so far in getting rid of your accent, you have learned a lot of new terms and your vocabulary has grown significantly. Expanding your vocabulary even further is a crucial step if you want to make sure you always understand what people are saying. After all, you need to be able to do this in order to answer them correctly.

What To Do

There are several ways you can broaden your knowledge, without having to do boring exercises. Let’s have a look at 3 methods that I have worked with.

Look Up Words

Whenever you study English, whether you are working on eliminating your accent or doing grammar exercises, it is important that you always have a dictionary with you. This enables you to look up all the words you don’t understand.

Throughout any day, you come across words or terms in places you might expect them but also in unexpected ones. For example, on billboards or on a menu. In these kinds of situations you’re unlikely to have a dictionary with you. In a case like that, it’s tempting to just shrug and ignore the unknown word. Even if you say to yourself that you’ll look it up later, you’re likely to forget.

As a solution to this annoyance, try saving those terms as text messages on your cell phone. You can quickly do that in virtually every thinkable place and we all carry our cell phones on us almost all the time. Doing that will give you the chance to look up the words later. An even easier way would be to ask somebody who’s with you for a definition or translation.

Read Books

Not everybody likes to read books. Even if you’ve never been an avid reader, give it a try for the sake of eliminating your accent. Just go to a bookstore and pick a book that immediately sparks your interest. It doesn’t have to be a novel or a book everybody says is good, just follow your instincts and buy whatever feels right. The advantage of reading a book, rather than just looking up words you come across, is that in some cases you won’t even need to look up a word because the meaning of it is apparent from the context.

Work With Vocabulary Books

If you neither like fiction books, nor non-fiction books, but would still like to work on your vocabulary, vocabulary books might be the right thing for you. There are many different kinds of vocabulary books out there. Some teach you new words with little stories, others work with simple translations, but basically they all provide you with exercises to broaden your vocabulary. These books can be very useful; however, they tend to be kind of dry. It might be harder to memorize the new terms because in most books they aren’t really part of a bigger context. I, personally, prefer reading novels, as vocabulary books can be somewhat boring to work with. However, it should be said that these books might be a bit more effective, since you can specifically chose the words you want to study.

You can find a list of recommended books in Appendix 4.

How This Step Will Benefit You

All the previous steps were more focused on speaking properly, but like I’ve stated before, this step is very important, because in order to speak a language without an accent, it is necessary for you to understand what people around you are saying.

Through reading books, looking up words and/or working with vocabulary books, you can gain additional knowledge. Actively working with these methods is very effective and will make your vocabulary grow faster than waiting to come across new words.

You’ll also notice changes when you’re having conversations. Your speech will grow more colorful and you’ll be able to express yourself clearer and more detailed. Besides that, you’ll also strengthen your grammar knowledge without having to study the rules.

Additional Help

In case you’d like to take it a step further, subscribing to an American newspaper will notably expand your vocabulary. If you don’t want to spend your money on a newspaper subscription, you could just read the articles online. Besides being a great aid in expanding your vocabulary, a newspaper also gives you information on local news and events which is always great material to start conversations with, and helpful when talking to natives.

If you decide to read books, there will probably be a lot of words you don’t understand, especially in the beginning. It is okay not to look up every single word you don’t know, but if you decide to look one up, do it immediately after having read it. By doing that, you’ll have the word in the context of a sentence or story and are more likely to memorize it. Try to avoid making a list with words that you didn’t understand to look up their meaning later. This won’t be as effective as looking up words right away.

In addition, I advise you to look up definitions in an English dictionary, rather than looking up translations in a bilingual dictionary. Since you are already thinking in English, it makes more sense to research the definitions in English as well, rather than just looking at the translation. This is again copying the native speakers who have no choice but to look up the words in a dictionary.

Step 8 - Further Steps By now, you have all the tools you need to eliminate your accent. You have done the exact same exercises that I did, and I lost my accent. So now that you’re reading this, I sure hope you’ve had success with all the previous methods, just like I did. This last step isn’t absolutely necessary, but I would like to provide you with two further possible exercises that you can try soon as you think you are ready. Read through them and if you think these will help you, do them. If you feel like you need to practice more, continue working on your accent and try them later.

Analyze the Language

Just like every language has grammar rules, there are certain rules of pronunciation. However, in English, these rules are in no way as extensive and reliable as in many other languages. Even within the US you may find different rules depending on where you live.

What To Do

Have you ever noticed that when words end on a silent “e”, they are pronounced differently than without it? A good example is bath and bathe. Then there are also words that are written entirely different from what they sound like, as in colonel which sounds more like “kurnel”.

That’s what this step is all about, trying to explore these rules and exceptions. There are no simple exercises that will teach you how to do that, so you just have to start somewhere and have a closer look at the English language. Unfortunately, doing this can be quite tricky because it’s hard to just sit down and start analyzing words as well as pronunciation patterns. It’s probably best to do this whenever you spot a rule by coincidence and then think of examples that follow the rule, as well as exceptions that come to mind.

You’ll probably notice soon after you’ve started to that there are very few hard rules in American English pronunciation. There are patterns, but most of them have numerous exceptions. This is one of the reasons why this step has only a limited effect on eliminating your accent. The rules of pronunciation can also differ greatly depending on whether you live on the West or East Coast, in the South, or the Midwest. In addition, the rules are so lax that natives tend not to follow them very strictly. Naturally, this gives the patterns even less importance.

How This Step Will Benefit You

Obviously, this step is not an essential one; however, it can give you an insight into the language. Furthermore, you might be able to use the patterns in determining how to pronounce words you don’t know.

In the end, you should be able to get rid of your accent without giving too much thought to this step, but it won’t hurt to know a little bit more about these kinds of rules. Besides that, you might find it fascinating to read books about this topic and learn more about American English pronunciation.

Do Some Writing

Speaking without an accent and writing aren’t as closely related as one might think. Being a great writer doesn’t mean you don’t have an accent, and speaking without an accent doesn’t make you a great writer. In addition, the use of slang is so widespread and acceptable in America that grammar rules aren’t always followed. Knowing all the rules won’t make you sound like an American. Still, after having eliminated most of your accent, I advise you to do some writing, which will make you feel more confident with the language’s formal side.

What To Do

You probably have some experience in writing simple, short things, like emails or memos. As a first exercise, it is best to write something that won’t overwhelm you, so you’ll be less likely to give up. Why don’t you write a long letter to a friend about what’s going on in your life. You don’t even have to send the letter, just write it for the sake of practicing your English.

If writing a letter is no problem, the next step on the ladder would be writing a short essay on a current topic. Pick any topic that you would like to learn more about. Take the essay seriously, go to the library or the Internet to gather information. After having finished, give it to a friend, ideally a teacher, to look over it and have him or her tell you what mistakes you’ve made. Another option would be to write a short fictional story if the thought of writing an essay doesn’t appeal to you.

For the most ambitious, you could try to write a book. Maybe you have experienced something in your life that you would like to tell others. Or, like me, you’ve had success in achieving a goal and believe that many people would like to know more about it.

How This Step Will Benefit You

Writing letters, essays, or short stories will probably only have subtle effects on your speech. Mainly, this step will help you expand your vocabulary and make you take a closer look at English grammar. Both of these benefits can be earned in different ways, but it must be said that if you enjoy writing, this step will be a pleasure and not just another exercise. Besides, we all need to know how to write, be it to fill out an application or write emails to a friend. Working on your writing skills will help you avoid making embarrassing mistakes.

Keys of Success Self-Confidence

Yes, I’ve said it before but I can’t stress it enough: In order to achieve your goal you need to have total self-confidence. Believe in yourself, believe that you can eliminate your accent, and you’ll see that it is easier than you would have ever imagined.

Time

We all would like wake up one morning and speak without accents, but that isn’t going to happen. Completely getting rid of your accent will take time and you need to allow yourself to take that time. I’m sure you saw results soon after you started to work with this book. But you have to keep going, even if you don’t think you’re making progress anymore. I’m sure you are still making progress, but because it’s so subtle you’ve become oblivious to it.

Schedule

I strongly advise you to create some kind of schedule of when you want to work on eliminating your accent. When learning a new language, practicing regularly and repeating exercises is very important, especially in the beginning. How successful you’ll be and how soon you’ll reach your goal depends on how much time you are willing to invest. A schedule will help you find the time to work with this book.

Combination

There are steps in this book that are more important than others. Also, I’m sure there are exercises you like doing, and maybe there are exercises that you would rather not do. Yet, it is very important to be aware of the fact that only doing all these steps combined will give you the desired results. Sure, if you prefer reading out loud to watching TV, you can devote more time to the reading part, but you will also need to take the time to do all the other steps.

Completely Absorb English

Remember the part about thinking in English? I hope you’re still doing it because this too is a key to success. In order to speak American English without an accent you need to completely absorb the language. Stop thinking of yourself as foreign in this place and speak English whenever you have the possibility.

Surround Yourself With Americans

If you want to completely absorb English, make sure you’re integrating yourself in the American world, especially if you live in a neighborhood where most people speak your native language. Make sure you go out there and socialize with Americans. You’ll be forced to speak English with them, which is a great way of practicing. You don’t have to give up old rituals or your heritage, but just by opening up and talking in the language you are trying to master, you’ll find it much easier to lose your accent.

Keep Going…

After some time working with this book, you might feel like the progress you’re making is only marginal. During this plateau time, you might be tempted to quit. Remember that even natives never stop to learn. They too don’t know all the words in the English language and mispronounce things sometimes. There are, of course, some exercises that you won’t have to do for the rest of your life, but you should commit yourself to certain things. Seeing your American friends on a regular basis, as well as watching TV only in English are two examples that are perfectly manageable and don’t require a huge effort.

A Final Note Every journey begins with one step…

I’m sure that you had certain hopes, expectations, and goals when you purchased this book. Maybe you were just curious, or maybe you’ve been working on getting rid of your accent for many years and have tried many different methods.

Whatever your reasons were, I would like to thank you for buying my book and taking the time to read it.

Speaking without an accent may not be the most important thing in the world, but it makes life so much easier and making this effort will benefit you for the rest of your life. I know from experience what an uphill battle eliminating an accent can be, so I wish you the strength, determination, and ambition to reach your goal.

I hope you’ve had success with the methods and exercises from this book, and that this book has provided you with all the right information you were looking for.

Most importantly, I hope you’ll experience the same success that I did.

Make this book the start of a new part of your life.