Case studies

American accent

This client from Russia wanted to acquire a General American accent for use as a graduate student in the USA.

Between the ‘before’ and ‘after’ recordings, he had eighteen hours of coaching over twenty months. The ‘after’ clip comes from a continuous three-minute recording, and demonstrates the American accent that he can now use without intervention from me.

Before:

After:

One rainy day, the rats heard a noise in the loft where they lived. The pine rafters were all rotten, and at last one of the joists had given way and fallen to the ground. The walls shook, and the rats’ hair stood on end with fear and horror. “This won’t do,” said the old rat who was chief. “I’ll send out scouts to search for a new home.” Three hours later, the seven scouts came back and said, “We’ve found a stone house which is just what we wanted. There’s room and good food for us all. There’s a kindly horse named Nelly, a cow, a calf, and a garden with an elm tree.

Changes include:

‘w’ and ‘v’ The client has learned to differentiate the sounds /w/ and /v/, specifically acquiring a native-like /w/ (e.g. in were and walls).
DRESS and TRAP The client has learned to differentiate these vowels, specifically by acquiring a distinct TRAP vowel /æ/ in contrast to DRESS /ɛ/.
Aspiration The client has learned to produce this in the contexts used by natives, e.g. aspiration on ‘p’ in pine and no aspiration on ‘c’ (k/g) in scouts.
‘o’ vowels The client has learned to use appropriate General American vowels in words such as rotten and won’t.

British accent

This professional from Malta came to me because she was often asked to repeat herself at work, and because she wanted to acquire a Standard Southern British accent for easier communication with international clients.

The ‘before’ and ‘after’ recordings were made four months apart, in the first and eleventh sessions of a package of twelve half-hours. The ‘after’ clip comes from a continuous three-minute recording, and demonstrates the British accent that she can now use without intervention from me.

Before:

After:

Changes include:

Non-rhoticity The client has learned to pronounce /r/ only when a vowel sound immediately follows (e.g. in rats but not in heard).
Vowels The client has learned to produce the FACE and GOAT vowels as wider diphthongs (e.g. day and home), and to make a bigger difference between short and long vowels (e.g. good and food respectively).
Aspiration The client has learned to produce somewhat stronger aspiration (e.g. on ‘p’ in pine).
‘l’ The client has learned to differentiate ‘clear l’ before vowels and ‘dark l’ elsewhere, as in all and elm.