accent reduction

[Susan Ervin-Tripp]

Thanks to Kathryn Remlinger for sending the interesting Luongo article.
At one point I was asked by someone in our China-born Chancellor's office
whether he should take accent-reduction lessons. I advised against it. He was
a very friendly man, beloved by students and faculty alike, and at 
that point raising
money from west coast asians and asian-americans was an important 
part of his job.
It could be argued that his accent was an advantage.  He had gotten his higher
education in the U.S. and was a very able speaker, so accent was the 
only issue.

When I was studying French bilinguals in Washington, D.C., who 
learned English as
adults (mostly war brides from World War II) I met one who was known among the
others as having an "enriched accent" in the sense that she 
exaggerated her accent.
It seemed that way too. She worked for Air France and her acquaintances thought
it was a professional advantage. These are two cases where accent is 
not a disadvantage.

During that period of time, I was so eager to find bilinguals I would 
address them
on the street and corral them for my research. I could tell French 
speakers from a distance
because rounded vowels are more frequent in French than English, and lip
rounding is visible.

On methods of accent reduction, there is a method used by an English 
teacher from
South American who spoke about her work here a few years ago. She has tapes of
English speakers with varieties of English, asks students which they 
want to sound like,
and teaches them how to do close phonetic transcription. In the 
process of learning to hear
fine differences, they also learn to produce the sounds.

Susan Ervin-Tripp