unlearning foreign accent

[Jean Berko Gleason]

Yukio Otsu wrote:
>
> Dear friends,
>
> I am looking for a study that explores how difficult (or how easy, for
> that matter) it is to unlearn incorrect phonology/morphology/grammar.
> If you are aware of any, please let me know.
>

Hi

That's probably too big a question....there are a number of commercial
enterprises in the US that concentrate on accent reduction (e.g., The
Speech Company in Boston), but I don't know if they use research-based
techniques.  I believe that the Center for Applied Linguistics also has
programs aimed at accent reduction, particularly in the workplace, and
they may have some studies to cite (www.cal.org).

There's also a literature on narrower topics--for instance, for his PhD
thesis at Boston University last year Jilani Warsi successfully taught
adult Japanese speakers to distinguish between English /l/ and /r/  (he
can be reached at jsabra at bu.edu)

--
Jean Berko Gleason