Is a video course or coaching better in improving your accent?
So you've decided to work on improving your accent or pronunciation in English. You already speak English at a decent level and just want to take it further. Maybe you want to be misunderstood less frequently at work or you just don’t want to have such an obviously foreign accent. For whatever reason, you’ve decided to improve your accent.
Now what?
There are a multitude of resources out there helping you to pronounce certain words or sounds correctly. Aside from the free material on the internet, two of the most effective ways to improve your accent are a self-paced course and live coaching. Both of these are more organized and have real materials for you to practice with. But which is best for you?
The answer to that depends on a few things:
Your study habits
Your current abilities
Your current knowledge
Natural talent
Let's go through these in order:
1. Your study habits
Do you practice regularly on your own? Do you track and measure your progress? Do you need someone to keep you accountable? These are questions you need to consider regarding study habits
You're a self-starter and regularly practice and even record yourself
If you're pretty self-motivated and can keep to a schedule of regular consistent practice, then you would benefit from a self-paced video course. The course provides the materials in an order that makes sense. All you need to do is follow the materials and do the practice. This is not to say you shouldn't take live coaching, however. You can benefit from both self-paced study and live coaching, whereas someone with less discipline might not benefit as much from a self-paced course.
You need someone to motivate you or keep you going
If you tend to procrastinate and need someone to be accountable too, don't fret! That's one of the reasons to hire a coach! This is the same reason for why gym-goers hire personal trainers: to keep them from slacking off. Besides this, coaches can also help you develop healthy study habits so you can be more self-sufficient. In my coaching programs I help students develop systems to get them practicing regularly. I try to find out what works and what doesn't work for students so the practice method they use can fit their lifestyle and so students really stick to it in the long-term.
2. Your current abilities
Where are you right now? Where do you want to be?
Still learning grammar & words: take a normal language class, worry about accent later.
If you're still struggling with English grammar and much vocabulary, you probably should be learning the grammar and words first. Accent reduction can wait. Yes, it would be better to get the sounds correct from the start, however, if you're constantly pausing to think of the word or to correctly form the sentence, you're better off improving your language proficiency. Once you speak more fluidly, you can worry about sounding more native. You can't work on accent reduction if you can’t speak the language. In my coaching classes, I typically only allow students speaking a B2 or higher level of English to enroll.
Fluent but foreign: Video courses or live classes/coaching
Most of my students are at this level. They are fluent in English for the most part. They speak without pausing and know what they want to say. They may misuse a word or make a grammatical mistake here or there but for all intents and purposes they are fluent. They just sound obviously non-native.
Students at this level are ready for the basics and intermediate lessons of accent reduction. They can benefit from online videos or structured video course lessons or live coaching. They are probably still pronouncing English with the sounds and other linguistic patterns from their native tongues. However, since they're fluent, they can start focusing on systematically improving the accent features that make up their accent. They can do this either in a video course or one on one coaching. A video course usually covers more general basic and intermediate problems, whereas live coaching is more tailored to the individual.
Near native sounding most of the time: Live coaching
If people around you keep telling you that you sound native and that your accent is great but once in a while someone can still figure out where you're from and this bothers you, first off: congrats! You're already way ahead of everyone else! However if you still want to go that final few steps to truly pass as native, then you will probably need a live coach. The coach can diagnose your problem and create tailored exercises for you to work on your probably minute and highly specific problems. Most video courses won't have such detailed exercises as they target more general common basic problems that you've probably worked on and fixed previously.
3. Your current knowledge
Do you know what aspiration is? How much about phonology do you know? Have you worked on improving your accent before?
Rather new to this accent & pronunciation stuff
If you're quite new and don't have much of an idea about how sounds work, how to pronounce them, or even what an accent is, you can get a better idea of the basics with a video course. In my course, I pick out the main, most important accent features and explain them in a way that makes sense to the uninitiated. Accent reduction is scientific and so students do need a little understanding of certain concepts, but at the beginning it's important to start slowly, step by step, which is how I structure my course, and this is how the exercises progress. You could also, however, get coaching, which would mean faster progress, although it is definitely more expensive. A coach will definitely help you with the basics, but so will a video course. The choice is yours here.
You’ve worked on your accent before
If you've worked on your accent for some time, either by yourself, in a class, or with a coach, then you probably know some phonetic terms like aspiration, stops, voicing, etc. You've also probably fixed some of the basics or even intermediate problems in your accent. Now you are ready to move onto the more advanced training. In this case, you'll get more benefit from live coaching. A coach can help you with the more advanced problems you have that classes, books, or videos won't cover because most people have bigger and more basic problems to work on. A coach will be able to tailor-make exercises specifically for you and your areas of improvement. In addition, coaches also lend a helping ear to listen carefully to the finest details of your accent and give guidance on how to improve it.
4. Natural talent & passion
Are you just good at language? Do you think you're not cut out for language? To a certain degree natural talent and passion can help but in the end it's still about dedication
You love the topic and it naturally comes to you
Great! That means you have the motivation down. You easily understand the rules and notice these patterns in real life. If this is the case, you can honestly do either a self-paced course or live coaching. If you've just gotten started in accent reduction, you could probably do a video course to learn and work on the basics and then get coaching to work on more advanced topics. Or you can do both at the same time to really thoroughly master the material. Either way works for you
You don't have "talent" for language
A lot of you might worry that you don't have the talent for language. A lot of you are probably mistaken 🙂. Well, at least in the belief that you can't do it. While talent can definitely help you, it's good habits and consistent practice that is the most important. Nevertheless, if you feel like you need extra help, a coach can definitely help. Not only will the coach explain difficult concepts to you, he or she will be able to motivate you and help you form useful study habits that, in the end, are more important than "natural talent".
Wrapping up
Both self-study through video courses and live coaching sessions can benefit you. It really depends on several factors as outlined above. The general takeaway is that if you need more general help and are more self motivated, a video course could work, but if you need more specific guidance live coaching will be your best bet. I offer both self-paced video courses as well as live coaching for my students and others who follow me on social media. Which works for you depends on the factors discussed in this article, but you can definitely reach out to me if you have any questions. Whatever you do, however, the most important thing is consistent practice. Accent reduction journey is a marathon, not a race -- the most successful are in it for the long run!