Consider The Following…#1

TWO THINGS FOR YOU TO THINK ABOUT

Three critical life skills that nobody teaches you: how to ask for honest feedback, how to take honest feedback, and how to give honest feedback.

Applying this to accent modification:

How are you asking for honest feedback about your accent?

How are listening to that honest feedback about your accent? Do you have a safe person, a safe place, a safe time to hear this feedback?

How are you giving honest feedback about your accent?

You can’t make someone change if they don’t want to change. All you can do is give feedback that you hope will one day spark change.

In this moment, are you wanting to change? Do your actions demonstrate that desire to change in the eyes of others?

TWO THINGS FOR YOU TO ASK YOURSELF

Who could you give better feedback to in your life? Who could you receive more feedback from in your life?

When you think of your accent modification journey, who you support in their own journey and your reception of feedback from others, who do you think needs to hear more feedback and who can you seek out to receive feedback from?

TWO THINGS FOR YOU TO TRY THIS WEEK

Give someone honest feedback. Ask someone (could be the same person) for feedback.

Try being vulnerable about this process with someone else. Whether that’s your partner, your mentor, your English teacher, or your friend. Opening that line of communication is important, if not for them, for your own learning.

As we move towards more inclusion, more acceptance for who people are, where they come from, and the life experience that is communicated in their speech, sometimes people don’t want to comment on your accent. That is their motivation.

As someone who perhaps is wanting to improve, learn the skill of augmenting their English pronunciation, you need to share that perspective, give them the freedom or allow them to speak openly about your accent. Because it can be the elephant in the room that we don’t address. Having the ability to ask for feedback needs to be allowed in this intersection of diversity, acceptance, and self-improvement.