"Alex's voice" is a work in progress - I am always learning a new language and trying to improve the ones I already speak. How I sound ten years from now in 2028 will probably be different again, depending on where I live, whom I'm working with and which new languages I am learning. However, my "work voice" has been pretty much set in stone since I've picked David the person whose accent I am going to mimic. Indeed, my "work voice" has improved over the years - it's what actors do, the longer the play a role, the better they get at playing that character. I have been playing "David, the posh English lawyer from Sloane Square" for quite a while already and whilst some may call it mimicry, I call it acting. I only play that part at work because my company is paying me good money to deal with clients and I'm being paid to represent my company in the best possible light, that means playing the character they would most want to deal with rather than trying to be myself. There isn't a one size fits all approach to this - often I am also dealing with people who are non-native speakers of English and I may or may not even be speaking English with them. So take my Spanish friend Nuria for example, we speak in a mix of English and Spanish, switching back and forth between the two languages. But when we do switch to English, I would use "Alex voice" with her rather than my "work voice" because I believe that "Alex voice" would be better received by a Spanish person as the accent isn't tied to one particular country and Nuria speaks English with a Spanish accent anyway, so using my "work voice" is hardly going to establish rapport with her in English.
1. What is your natural accent? How do you sound to others?
If you went to see a doctor, the first step of any consultation would be the diagnosis - what are we dealing with here? To get an accurate diagnosis, we need to analyze the symptoms. So in the first instance, it would be useful to get some very honest feedback about the way you sound. The first thing to do would be to do a recording of yourself reading out aloud and then listening back to the recording. But then, you'll need an independent opinion, rather than a biased one to get an accurate evaluation. Imagine you went to a good friend and instead of trying to be honest with the way you sound, she is more concerned about not hurting your feelings. But her motivation to give you that feedback is to make you feel better, rather than it being any kind of accurate reflection on the way you sound. The good news is that once you have identified your natural accent, it then becomes a lot easier to address some of the most common issues associated with your accent. Whilst everyone's accent is as unique as their fingerprints, there will be certain common patterns. The key reason why we have an accent when we speak English is because we speak another language and that other language strongly influences the way we speak English. So for example, many Korean people typically struggle with the letter Vs and Fs because they don't exist in Korean - ironic that one of the most popular loanwords from English in Korean is 'fighting' (which is used as an encouragement, not unlike 加油 in Chinese), but that usually comes out of 'hwaiting'. That should be a phrase that should be rather familiar to you if you are a fan of Korean culture, especially if you enjoy your K-dramas.
2. Why do you want to change your accent?
This is an important consideration: why do you want to change your accent? I think the most common reason that people want to do that is to improve their employment prospects or for career advancement but it could be for other personal reasons as well. How important your accent is in that aspect really depends on the kind of work you do - a computer programmer would sit behind his computer all day coding, so his accent is hardly important compared to the quality of his coding, whereas for a salesman like me who has to do a lot of networking and do many sales pitches, the way my accent makes me sound plays a huge part in how successful I am at my job. I would compare it to driving: now I do have a license and I can drive, but I'm hardly a good driver. I would describe myself as a nervous, very cautious and slow driver because I have not had enough practice. I live in central London and do not own a car, since I don't need one. Does my limited ability to drive impede my ability to do my job? No, because I can use public transport to get to where I need to be for work - whereas a taxi driver or a bus driver's ability to do their job well would clearly be dependent on their ability to drive well. Would I be able to do the work a taxi driver does? No, no way! Driving for so many hours a day would just totally stress me out as I am not a confident driver! Therefore, it would be useful to analyze if you're indeed in a situation where you really need to change your accent or not. Perhaps you need to do it urgently, perhaps you don't need to at all.
So really, the question you need to answer is this: if you're changing your accent, what is the ideal outcome? For whom are you changing it for? Once you have identified and defined your objective, then it is time to work backwards to figure how to get from where you are to where you would like to be. So in the case of my reader who wants to qualify as a teacher in Australia, her goal would be to have an accent that sounds a lot more Australian, something that the Australian students will be very familiar with and not have any difficulty in understanding. But having spent time in Australia, I realize that there isn't one Australian accent but a multitude of accents local to Australia - the accent of a farmer in the remote outback in Western Australia would sound nothing like the well educated Australian elite in the major cities So perhaps she should pick someone like former PM Julia Gillard, a woman who commanded so much respect around the world and sounds very articulate whilst having a distinctly Australian accent. If a teacher were to speak like Julia Gillard in the classroom, she would most certainly command the attention of her students and be able to establish her authority very quickly. This is of course, very different from my 'work voice' for a simple reason: I'm not trying to sell to Australians, I spend most of the time dealing with people in the UK so I have picked my English lawyer friend David as the person I would like to mimic in this exercise as that is the kind of person my clients would not only trust, but also be good friends with. Yeah, it's really that simple, "you can trust me as I speak and sound like your friends."
Let's not pretend that this process is easy, it isn't! We need all the help we can get. Even for that Singaporean lady living in Australia, she is surrounded by Australians there - why aren't they helping her with her accent? Are they plain unhelpful? Well, the most obvious answer is that we're too polite to correct another person when they have an accent or make a mistake when they speak English. My friend said to me in the gym tonight, "The train delayed make me late". He wasn't a native speaker of English - but I understood him perfectly. Did I want to start giving him an English lesson there and then? Of course not. I'm not sure he was interested in getting an English lesson from me and more to the point, I didn't want to make him feel awkward or like he was being judged for the way he spoke English. Furthermore, I feared that others would be offended on his behalf if I had corrected his English, like "how dare you make him feel bad about his English!" The default response is not to correct someone when they make a mistake when they speak English and to only ask for clarification if you did not understand what they were trying to say. In terms of correcting someone's accent, you're really asking your friends to split hairs with you about how certain words are pronounced and to literally stop you mid-sentence just to point out when you had used a different vowel sound or placed the stress on the wrong syllable.
Let me give you an example: I used to pronounce the word 'Scotland' with quite a long first syllable, like 'Scaahtland'. I'm not sure where that came from, but I was told that Americans are far more likely to pronounce Scotland that way with an 'ah' vowel sound rather than a 'uh' vowel sound for the first syllable. Unnecessarily lengthening the first syllable made me sound remarkably non-native and quite American, I somehow picked up that habit along the way and no one corrected me as they knew exactly where I was referring to. Well, it is a mistake: short vowel sounds need to be short, that's how we differentiate words like been and bin, pull and pool, green and grin. Until it was pointed out to me, I didn't realize I was making that mistake. My partner was the one who told me to listen to the way he pronounce 'Scotland' and sure enough, he kept the first syllable really brief in comparison to the way I pronounced it. I now pronounce the word 'Scotland' the same way as he does after he corrected me. But I do ask him to correct me if I say something that makes me sound non-native, even if it makes me sound American. I guess when I am using 'Alex's voice' I might be so relaxed that I would revert back to saying 'Scaahtland' instead of 'Scotland' - but when I am in work mode, I am more keenly aware of not unnecessarily lengthening short vowel sounds. Thankfully my partner knows I won't take offence if he corrects me, but do you have friends who are both native speakers of the accent you wish to acquire and willing to help you out like that?
Well, that's a much broader question about learning anything when we are older! This is a question that I tend to encounter when discussing how we can learn a foreign language when we get older, whether it is easier to learn languages as a child. The bottom line is that many people think it is easier to learn new things when they are children: be it a sport, a musical instrument or a foreign language - but that's totally untrue. Children don't have the burden of having to do all the things that adults have to do - until the age of 18, most children and teenagers are full time students, so that's all they do all day, they dedicate all their time to learning and under those circumstances, of course it is easier to learn anything! Trying to learn anything new whilst holding down a full time job is extremely demanding of course, my friend Marianne at my adult gymnastics who is working full time and has two young daughters, so she misses quite a lot of training because she often just cannot find the time to come to gymnastics if something crops up at work or if she needs to do something for her children. She is also dependent on her husband being free to take care of her young children if she is going out for 3 hours. That's the main reason why she isn't making much progress - it has nothing to do with her attitude, talent or physical ability to do gymnastics, she just isn't finding the time to train regularly enough! Many adults with demanding jobs and family duties find themselves in the same situation as Marianne when it comes to learning anything new, but they often end up thinking, "oh my, it was far easier to learn new things when I was a child".
A lot of people would simply default to negativity, they think, "I can't change my accent, after al, I have grown up speaking like that, how can I ever change?" With that attitude, they give up before even trying. My response to that is simple: how much you can improve, how much you learn is entirely dependent on how much time and effort (but mostly time) you put into this. It is entirely up to you: learning more about a language you already speak is really no different from learning a new language - I speak several languages fluently but I am constantly trying to improve those that I already speak through more study and practice. Even if you are indeed monolingual, there's no reason to imagine that you're so fluent and perfect that you can never improve your mother tongue. Hardly anyone ever tries to improve a language they already speak - even if they were to try to study a language, they would try their hand at a new foreign language rather than improve their mother tongue or first language. But of course, with the right attitude and a willingness to invest a lot of time into changing one's accent, it is quite achievable. Heck, if one can master a foreign language as an adult, then it is far easier to simply modify the accent you have in a language that you already speak. When you learn a new language, you have to acquire a brand new set of vocabulary, figure out a new system of grammar (which can be very complicated and confusing) and get the pronunciation right when you speak - it's a huge project yet people regularly learn foreign languages anyway despite the very daunting challenges. So the bottom line is this: you reap what you sow.
6. Can students do this? Should students do this?
Well, I certainly think so. Please allow me to be extremely clear here: I'm not talking about changing your accent because that's a fallacy to begin with. A competent speaker of English can switch between several different accents to suit the social situation - the same way a multilingual person can switch between several different languages depending on whom they are talking to. It is a complete fallacy to assume that we can only have one accent when we speak English - that may be true of some people who aren't very educated and struggle with English. Take my mother for instance, she speaks English with a very strong Singaporean accent and that's the only way she knows how to speak English. That's fine, I'm not judging her, she's pretty typical of older Singaporeans in the way she speaks English. But for younger people in Singapore who have access to a much higher quality of education these days, if they emerge from their formal education only speaking English as well as someone like my mother, then something is desperately wrong and they are being let down by the system. This begs the question: what is the purpose of education? Surely it is to prepare young students to face the many challenges awaiting them in the big bad working world. Hence we need to understand precisely the kind of challenges a young person like my nephew would need to face when he eventually has to find a job.
Some students may participate in some kind of amateur drama as part of their experience at school, this may be part of their curriculum or merely something they do for fun to develop a different aspect of their social skills. I had the opportunity to do that all through my education in Singapore which was pretty rare, I specifically chose to do theatre studies & drama (TSD) as an A level subject because it was something I had really enjoyed very much. So when you get on stage and have to act another character, one of the first things you do is think, okay how is this character going to sound like, what kind of accent would this character have? What kind of qualities am I trying to convey to the audience when I say these lines? Is this character someone who is confident or nervous? Eloquent or inarticulate? Sexy or geeky? A leader or a follower? A selfish person or a caring friend? Sure we can wear fancy costumes to make the character come to life, but so much of it depends on how we act on stage. The beauty about acting is that it forces you to think about how the audience is going to perceive the character you are portraying and thus what you need to do to convey those qualities. That is excellent training for real life when we have to interact with real people out there, we need to be always thinking about what kind of message we are giving them and within that context, one's accent is one of the key ways that shape the impressions we make on them. This doesn't have to be all hard work - it could be a lot of fun too.
This is an issue faced by Singaporeans especially if they live overseas and the accent determines how they are perceived. I've lived in UK for over 8 years. When I first came, I had a very strong Singaporean accent. I was working for a British company and some of them had problems understanding my accent. Fortunately, because the vocabulary I've used in Singapore has been quite limited - so the English words I've read but seldom pronounce them in the day to day - I've managed to pick up the British accent. In most cases, I do speak with a half British and some words sounds rather Singaporean. When I go back to Singapore and buy something from Starbucks, I sound super british to them and they look at me strangely with an amused smile. However, when I speak in Mandarin mixed with English, my Singaporean accent is much more pronounced. I find it difficult to have two different accents in the same language. i.e. English. So I've stuck to my more British/American accent for work purposes so my Singaporean friends might find it strange at times (and out of place). But because most of my work requires communication with British and Americans, so I prefer to stick with my new accent to make sure communication is clear and professional rather than a strong Singaporean accent that ends up with alot of "sorry, I didn't get you or sorry, I didn't understand"
ReplyDeleteExactly, we call it code switching. That's why I have a work voice and my own voice - two different accents in English which I can decide when to use for different occasions.
DeleteYour true accent is the one you use to talk to yourself. Outside of yourself, you can cultivate your accent. If you use an accent long enough, you own it. Then the accent you had before becomes secondary.
ReplyDeleteExactly: you can cultivate your accent, you can cultivate several different accents and use them like you use any other skill you possess.
DeleteNow I'm really curious as to what your "work voice" sounds like as opposed to "Alex voice" like in the video!
ReplyDeleteRemind me and I'll do a post on Instagram for you. :)
DeleteMind you, what I do is pure mimicry. I mirror the other person. I just got off the phone with a Korean client - we spoke in English of course (I only very little Korean) and he was educated in the US, so he speaks American English so immediately I switched to a very Americanized version of 'Alex's voice' to try to match the Americanized version of his English. I did that without thinking and it was only after I hung up that I thought, boy that sounded reaaaally American.
Deleteok i will follow you on instagram to hear it :)
ReplyDeleteDear Limpeh,
ReplyDeleteI am extremely honoured that you wrote a blog entry based on my question to you!
I am currently in Singapore visiting family and am going to sit for the IELTS exam this coming Sunday (4 November) in Singapore. My university friend (I went to university in Singapore, so I'm as Singaporean as it gets) who is currently working in Sydney advised me to take the IELTS in Singapore as the examiners in Singapore might understand the Singaporean accent better than the examiners in Sydney, hence I might stand a higher chance of obtaining the minimum band score of 8 (out of a maximum of 9) for the speaking component. Honestly I am feeling stressed and tired about the IELTS as this is my 5th (or 6th? Gosh I've lost count) attempt. It is a huge blow to my self esteem as I have always prided myself as being competent in the English language. I went to good schools and am very conscious about being accurate in writing and speaking English, especially in academic and professional contexts. The tests have also burned a huge hole in my pocket!
Looking beyond the IELTS, I do aspire to sound more Australian (or at least have a more neutral sounding accent) as I foresee my husband and I would be in Sydney in the near future. I recently got a job at a coaching college (aka tuition centre) and a student who has a Singaporean mother and white Australian father commented that I had a really strong Singaporean accent. I was disappointed as I was trying very hard to drop my Singaporean accent and mimic the way Australians speak! Seems like I am atrocious at mimicry and I have to find a way to address this problem.
Limpeh, may I also seek your opinion of the standard of my English writing? I am feeling quite insecure about it, as my IELTS writing results haven't been terrific. I need a minimum band score of 7 for writing, but the highest I ever got was 8 (and I really believe my writing was accurate and reflected that I have been using English as a first language all the way till university). My average writing score is 7.5 and the Singaporean in me thinks this is not good enough, considering I tend to attain the maximum band score of 9 for reading and listening. I even got 6.5 for writing once, and it was extremely upsetting because for that particular IELTS exam, I somehow managed to obtain 8.5 for speaking!
Thank you very much again Limpeh.
Hi Wanjun - some people are better at mimicry than others and that's often the last missing part of the puzzle. What you need is a better teacher, someone who can understand how you learn.
DeleteNow there are three ways people learn: firstly, there are the copycats. You don't need to explain what the accent is, they simply listen carefully and reproduce it because they can HEAR what the accent is. This is a gift that not everyone is born with, for example, Japanese people tend to lump both the L and the R into the same sound as they don't make a distinction between the two in their language so their ears are not trained to hear the difference. The second type of learners will need someone to explain to them how to pronounce a sound and I was like that - once I had a voice coach point out to me what my errors were: for example, he picked the word 'little' which I had been saying like 'litter', once he explained the difference between the 'tle' and 'ter' sound, my brain processed the difference but I needed it explained to me like that.
The last kind of learner needs the teacher to literally put their tongue in the right place, for example, I do that trying to teach Singaporeans how to pronounce words like THis, wiTHout, teeTH etc - I have to literally tell them to put the tip of their tongue against the back of their front teeth. And it then almost becomes a dance routine for the tongue and jaw, as I tell them in minute detail where and how to move their mouths to make the sound the right way. Of course, a Singaporean who pronounces the word "without" as 'wivout' isn't far off at all, but it is still a problem and these corrections are tiny and subtle, but I don't know if your teacher has actually tried this method?
Ultimately, you may respond to more than one method - if you don't respond to one method of teaching, your teacher needs to try another method, until s/he finds the one you respond best to.
Wanjun,
DeleteLet me tell you my experience with IELTS when I wanted to get my PR.
I did IELTS twice in Perth. I got a band 7 in speaking and tried again and got a band 8. I think the main difference is being relaxed. I went in with zero expectations after being disappointed with my band 7. If my friend had not advised me to have another go, that would be the end of my Australian adventure.
My theory is that examiners are wary of people who memorised off a script so be yourself and take it easy. I actually got the same examiner twice and did some small talk with him the second time around. It didn't help that the room we got felt like a police interrogation room!
Even got a Band 9 in speaking in London when I had to do an IELTS test while on holiday. The examiner was bemused that a Malaysian was doing an IELTS test in London while on a long vacation to get into an Australian course.
An off topic question but why do you want to teach in Australia? I've had to deal with some high school students while volunteering and it can be rough especially in tough neighbourhoods. It is a different culture to Singapore where the default is parents pushing the students outside of school. As someone who grew up under the Malaysian system, it was quite a culture shock to me.
Other than that, how is life as a teacher in Singapore?
For what it is worth Zelda, what you said applies to the UK as well - ie. if you teach in a nice school with kids from rich families, then it is a breeze. I have even heard about teachers getting stabbed in schools in very rough neighbourhoods - a history teacher once got stabbed in the classroom when he challenged a student. Good grief. It is freaking insane. At least I can't see that happening in Singapore but I suppose the gap between the rich and the poor is far bigger in the West.
DeleteDear Limpeh,
ReplyDeleteI just received my IELTS results.
Reading & Listening 9/9
Writing 8.5/9
Speaking 7.5/9
Overall 8.5/9
I am so disappointed as even though I exceeded the requirements for reading, listening and writing, I failed to meet the cut for speaking again, having fallen short of that precious 0.5 points. I have been unsuccessful in trying to go beyond 7.5. I need at least an 8 in order to be accredited as a public school teacher.
Sometimes I feel like giving up. All these test attempts do not come cheap. I've since thrown close to $2000 on these tests in a bid to prove that I can function in English! I feel indignant because English is not a foreign language to me.
I have found work as a part time tutor in a tuition centre here in Sydney. It is ideal for me as I have a young child to look after. However I don't think it is a sustainable long term career. Hence I'm still aspiring to teach in a public school on a full time basis once the time is right. Alas, I keep facing setbacks. I just cannot go beyond the 7.5 barrier for speaking despite my best efforts to speak well. I am always polite and friendly and elaborate on my answers without using colloquial Singlish expressions. I took my friend's advice and sat the most recent IELTS in Singapore instead of in Sydney but I wind up with the same score.
I really am at a loss on what to do now.
Hi Wanjun. I am sorry to hear about your latest disappointing results.
DeleteAll I can say is that perhaps after trying so very hard, it is a sign to try to do something different? After all, you must have a variety of different interests and skills that you can draw upon - skills that can empower you to be good at a different career apart from teaching? After all, part time tutor work at a tuition center is hardly a long term sustainable career as you've said.
Hi Limpeh, thank you. Sigh I am just wondering why a Singaporean like me who had a decent education just couldn't get past the speaking barrier. Is my speaking really that repulsive?
DeleteHi Wanjun, I do empathize with you but I'm going to share with you something from today. I had a major issue at work today when my boss accused me of doing something wrong and I was quite upset because he had made an assumption (which was totally wrong) - as it turned out, I didn't do anything wrong at all. But did he have the social graces to say, oh I had been mistaken, sorry about that. Nope, he didn't. And sure I got upset, nobody likes to be accused of making a mistake which they didn't make. I could have moped over the incident all day, but instead I talked to some people and by 7:15 pm, I had two offers of a new job. Now I'm thinking two, three steps ahead to what I want to do with my career in 2019 and whether I want to leave and if I do, when do I leave and which one of these 2 offers do I want to take? So when I am thinking about 2019 and 2020, I'm no longer focusing on what happened earlier today.
DeleteThat's what you need to do my friend - okay, I think you just need to accept that you can't pass this test and move onto something else different, something that you can indeed pursue and excel in. Make plans, make big plans for 2019 and focus on those plans.
Hi there Wanjun, I have dug this up for you, some interesting food for thought for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6L1P4uBhFJE
Delete