5 Benefits of Online Accent Reduction Coaching

Speaking at a digital nomad and remote worker meetup in Zagreb, October 1, 2021

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to speak at a digital nomad meetup in Zagreb. Attending the event were representatives from Salt Water Nomads and Total Croatia news, as well as numerous remote workers, Croatian locals, as well as of course digital nomads.

I was invited to speak and given free rein to speak about anything regarding my digital nomad experience. In the end I spoke about how I ended up working remote as an accent coach helping people improve their English pronunciation and standard American accent.

Digital Nomad meetup in Zagreb, Oct 1, 2021

Left: Me standing alongside the digital nomad ambassador along with other speakers and a representative from Total Croatia News

I won’t go into too much detail about my origin story today—you can watch my whole video here. Instead, I will talk a little about how this digital nomadic / location independent lifestyle has helped both my students and myself as an accent coach. So without further ado, here are three benefits to working with an accent coach online.

1. Study from home

The most obvious benefit to online accent modification coaching is flexibility. My students are able to take classes with me one one one without having to physically come to any physical location. They can take classes from the comfort of their own home, in their pajamas. Imagine what you can do with all that time you saved? You can practice your accent more! *wink wink nudge nudge*

2. Classes while (mildly) sick

Another benefit with online classes that must be said in these pandemic times is that if the student or teacher is mildly sick, you can still attend classes without the fear of getting sick (or getting your teacher sick). Language classes already require a lot of talking, and accent reduction classes require even more so. Imagine scrutinizing the mouth and tongue areas to get the sound right while sick, that would be sickness waiting to happen! Imagine taking accent reduction classes with a mask on. You can’t! With a mask you can still do all that from behind the safety of a screen!

3. Lower prices, same value

As a digital nomad accent coach, I tend to go where the cost of living is cheaper. This, coupled with the ability to teach from my own home means I can save on all sorts of costs, which translates to more affordable prices for my students. I once browsed prices for speech coaches in New York where I lived for many many years and saw that they charged 100 USD or more per hour. While I’d love to earn that much, I also want students to be able to afford to book multiple classes so I can help them on their accent improvement journey!

4. Coach productivity

On the flip side, as the instructor, I also get flexibility for my work schedule. This helps both me and my students. For example, not having a commute means more time to research, create, and test new materials to help my students. After my classes I can check out a new cafe to work on new materials. This change of pace and location helps stimulate creativity and is part of the reason I keep innovating new ways to encourage my students to persist on their accent reduction goals.

5. Local and global experience

Finally, the last but most interesting benefit of my being an accent coach who is also digitally nomadic is the ability to interact with more people who speak with similar accents or languages to those of my students. This means that I have continuous exposure to the accents I work with. In my case, the majority of my students are in Europe and Asia. By living abroad in various European and Asian countries, I meet people with accents similar to those of my students and I am continually reminded of my work. This often leads to ideas of new materials or exercises I can create for my students. As you can see my accent coaching work is my passion and I’m always thinking about how I can improve my work.

Explaining a little about how I got started with accent coaching online in my presentation

So there you have it, these are some of the benefits I’ve noticed that came with being coaching online and living abroad. I’m grateful I can have so many dedicated students and in turn I want to be able to dedicate my time to helping them with their goals and share my love of the English language and accents with them.