Spring Cleaning
Spring Cleaning
Time for something new
In With the New
In addition to online group instruction, another change I’m making this spring is to the private speech coaching I do. Similar to the monthly meetings in the group, I’m modifying my private lessons to make it easier to follow the cycle approach that I believe works best. I’ve divided it into quarters so the complete course takes one year, but stays on track with monthly, weekly, and daily speech practice.
The first three months can be taken on its own as a “Quick Start” program that focuses on the main areas of prosody, word stress, and pronunciation. It begins with a full speech evaluation. Everything is modified for different languages so the practice includes specific sounds or intonation issues that are unique to the influence of other languages on English.
The next three cycles are three months each and focus on the higher-level aspects of American English such as pitch range and intonation in cycle 2, the details of pronunciation in cycle 3, and the integration and application of all the skills to your professional speaking situations.
The set of 10 lessons and three evaluations that I’ve been doing for quite a while usually take people a year to complete so this 12-month program isn’t a big change. What’s different is the structured approach to each cycle and each month within the cycle. Each month includes:
Lesson on a specific speech feature
Feedback on all practice recordings
Daily prompts for mini-practice (can be done in under 5 minutes)
Weekly check-ins
Monthly speech evaluation update
Even with the new organization, there will always be application to your vocabulary and language you use in your professional speaking situations. The great benefit of private speech coaching is that it is immediately applicable to your daily speech.
If you’d like to learn more about private speech coaching, you can schedule a free consultation here: