I am currently a college student and have been living in an English speaking country since when I was 15. I have no major problem with reading, writing, and understanding English. I do not have to go through complex procedures of interpreting English into my native language when I communicate and sometimes feel more comfortable reading or writing in English than in my native language.
Unfortunately, I have a terrible speech skill and my accent is extremely heavy. I can be articulate when I write down, but I am really far from articulate when I speak. This is probably because I am very shy and bad at holding a thorough conversation in both English and my native language (albeit slightly better in my native language). I actually did not have a lot of opportunities to have a deep conversation with the others because I have been avoiding such situation due to my fear of miscommunication mixed with mild social anxiety. My poor speech skill gets noticeable when I am in a situation that would make me feel nervous (ex. phone call, job interview, speaking with authorities).
My accent is presumably on the level of non-native speakers who moved to an English speaking country at age 25+. People almost immediately notice that I am of a foreign nationality when I start speaking and some people, especially those who are unaccustomed with foreign accent, ask me to either slow down or repeat when I speak. I tried watching a lot of netflix shows and TEDtalk to improve my accent, but this attempt did not really work.
I understand that English will never be my first language since I moved here after age 10-11, but my accent and poor speech skill make me feel miserable. I recently lost my pre-graduation job offers because of my poor speech skill and noticeable accent. So I feel like these are the two things that I must work on before I start my job hunting but do not know where to start with.
First, what should I do to improve my speech skill? The one thing that I realized is that practice is a key to improve my speech skill, but I do not know where to start from. Since I am bad at speaking in both languages, I assume ESL materials are not an option for me. I am willing to make more opportunities to communicate with others and take speech courses. I am even willing to get a speech pathologist if my speech problem stems from social anxiety.
Second, should I get an accent coach to remove my accent? I personally know two people who successfully removed their accent after moving here around at my age; one of them actually got an accent coaching while she was in college while the other one just watched a lot of TV shows. So based on what I saw, I think accent coaching may help me, but I am not so sure how helpful it would be.
Any advice would be appreciated!
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from howaimbawai| Languagelearning http://bit.ly/2EgLFuF
via Learn Online English Speaking
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