There is a solution: Use technology effectively - smartphones
Ka:
A short story (shorter version):
* There was a young gifted athlete who wants to become a pro boxer
* Unfortunately, he had a bad coach and his punches look really inefficient and dangerous
* He practiced 1000+ hours incorrectly, so whenever he went to a tournament, he did not do too well.
* What made it worse was that he did not even know that he has bad form, technique.
* His lack of a good foundation became his limiting factor - good cardio, toughness did not help
* Fortunately, this young boxer found a new master
* The new master immediately new that he needed to fix his foundation, and
break the old habits and create new good ones.
* Instead of putting him in the ring to spar with other boxers, the master took him to the
dancing room full of mirrors.
* The youngling complained - however, the master ordered the young boxer to work on his basic only.
These were his drills all day:
Look in the mirror and execute 1-2 basic but more fundamental punches. Always looking in the mirror!
When posture was off, master was giving instructions.
Soon the student knew how proper technique should look in the mirror and was able to correct himself.
* Self realization of proper technique was important.
Now the student could train and correct his own mistake by watching himself in the mirror whenever he
trained.
* So he trained day and night.... 100+ hrs... and replaced his old bad techniques with the new proper one.
* He fixed his bad habits, and became a great boxer...
How is this relevant?
* boxer is you
* bad posture / foundation is your accent that you want to fix
* bad instruction / teacher -> lack of proper training, or bad instruction
* new master - any qualified ESL teacher who can give you good feedback
but can not be with you 24-7.
* boxing match, sparring partners:
presentations, interviews, coworkers, or English speakers in your environment
* MIRROR : YOUR FEEDBACK SYSTEM - THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF YOUR TRAINING
(besides sparring partner and coach, but that is material for another story~)
A mirror is always objective - it will not lie, and it will be with you whenever you train,
even if your coach is not with you.
So what is this Feedback system for accent reduction then???
* Its an audio recorder or a variant!
That's it? No, not really.
With a standard audio recorder, you need to click 4 buttons for each iteration.
REC/STOP/PLAY/DELETE - for each feedback loop.
Imagine a mirror that you need to wipe completely for 2 seconds
to see yourself doing punching for 10 sec.
Wiping the mirror would take away the focus from training, and completely demoralize you.
What is the solution?
Well, when I started my journey 2 years ago, I could not find one.
So I built my own. I experimented with several prototypes, and a lot of them were failures.
However, I think I managed to build the correct tool for speech training.
It can not replace a good teacher. But think of it as a special mirror that accentuates your
bad posture so you know what is wrong.
The iPhone/Android app that I built is called EchoHacks Speech Trainer.
You can download the free version on your smart phone.
If you don't have access to a smart phone, at least try to use an audio recorder and work with
the feedback. That is the fastest way to improve one's accent in my opinion.
Good luck,