Accent Reduction
for speakers of Slavic Languages
This is the coaching overview of the Accent Reduction and Pronunciation program for Slavic language speakers. The Slavic languages are known to be fairly similar to each other, and common problems include final consonants voicing or devoicing where they shouldn’t be, as well as a smaller number of vowels than English. Despite these common problems, there still exist various differences in phonology that merit creating slightly different curricula for major language groups.
Language-specific areas of focus
Russian
Russian is a stressed-timed language like English, but it lacks secondary stress, and its word stress and intonation can often differ from that of English. In addition, Russian speakers often transfer their soft and hard sounds into English, resulting in the distinctive Russian accent.
“Рекомендую на 100%… Особенно рекомендую русскоговорящим т.к. он очень хорошо понимает откуда растут ноги у наших ошибок в произношении.”
— Дмитрий, St. Petersburg
“Today we worked on American intonation… This topic is very hard for me, because American and Russian intonations are very different…But thanks to Adrian I've started to understand it better, to notice this difference.”
— Natalia, Severomorsk
👉 Join my Facebook group for Russian speakers learning American English
👉 Check out my video course: American Accent for Speakers of Russian
Polish
Polish has six vowels so pronouncing the 15-20 vowels of English will be a major focus of the course. In addition, Polish word stress almost always falls on the penultimate syllable of a word, whereas in English stress is difficult to predict. Thus, learning proper English word stress will be a major focus.
“Adrian is a very friendly person and a qualified teacher who can explain difficult things in an easy way… We work on accent reduction and correct pronunciation but I also could learn a lot of interesting things about linguistics.”
— Hanna, Wielkopolska
“Adrian is a fantastic teacher that is truly one of a kind. The curriculum is tailored for your needs and based on your weak spots. Adrian is a very professional and easy-going type of person, so we immediately get along with each other :) I can't think of any reason not to recommend Adrian”
— Paweł, Upper Silesia
👉 Join my Facebook group for Polish speakers learning American English
Ukrainian
The Ukrainian language is unique among northern Slavic languages in that it doesn’t devoice final obstruents so less attention needs to be paid attention to this unit. However, Ukrainian word stress and intonation, like Russian can sometimes be different from English patterns.
“I used many rules that we learned with Adrian during my demo at work and it was successful. I feel that my pronunciation becomes better. Thanks Adrian”
— Anna, Kyiv
“Adrian is an amazing teacher! The course, methodology, and explanations are exactly what I’ve been looking for. Highly recommended!”
— Tamara, Odessa