Why The Need for Accent Coaching?
“Why people are resorting to accent coaching for personal reasons is because we tend to associate accents with all these other qualities. Depending on how you sound, you might be perceived as unfriendly, unattractive, trustworthy, untrustworthy etc”, says Vijay Ramjattan, a PhD Researcher at the University of Toronto, .
Citing the concern of his students, Miller said “[Indians] find themselves in situations where they have to repeat themselves often, or they have to rephrase their sentences, or even speak in slow motion so as to be understood, and that’s when they usually reach out to us for assistance”, explaining the high demand for accent modification.
Not taking away from individual agency and insecurities that may have led them to seek accent coaching, Ramjattan presses that the focus is misplaced. It needs to shift from the speaker to the…