April 18th, 2012
On Sunday, April 15th 2012, we held our first full day intensive workshop at our accent reduction training center in Kerrisdale. The attendees received a day long training, our accent reduction course book, and access to our online training software for a full year in order to achieve their goals as well as a free lunch.
By strange coincidence, one attendee, Ming Ji, was actually instructor Jeff Madigan’s past student from 12 years ago. At that time, Jeff was working for Coquitlam College’s vacation study program and Ming Ji had just arrived from China. “I remember that Jeff took us to Squamish to hike “the chief”. It was my first real experience in Canada and I have gone back there a few times with my friends.” Ming Ji said. Now, 12 years later, Jeff and Ming Ji are learning new things again. Vancouver is a small city in that way.
Jenny was also very happy with the one day workshop. She said “To further improve my pronunciation, I still need to work hard on it—that’s how your online practice system works. I am happy to have attended—it turned out to be a wonderful study experience forever!”
Our next intensive one day accent reduction workshop will be on Sunday May 13th from 10am to 4pm. Click here for more information. or visit us at http://l2accentworkshop.eventbrite.com/
Tags: accent reduction courses, accent reduction training, accent reduction workshop, Jeff Madigan, pronunciation training, speak clearer accent reduction workshop, Vancouver
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March 27th, 2012
Last night I attended a presentation about social media and branding by Marc Smith from Amuse Consulting Inc. L2 Accent Reduction sponsored the Human Resources Management Association event. Many Human Resource Directors admitted that social media is changing how companies recruit. For many, they no longer consider references and instead prefer to Google someone’s name.
A few months ago, I was speaking to a recent immigrant from Iraq. In her first three months in Canada, she said that she realized that one of the most common answers people gave her in response to questions she had was, “Just Google it.” The internet is changing how we do things, and how we find information.
Unfortunately, many New Canadians do not engage in social media. Even though we know social media is quite active all around the world. For example, the use of Twitter in the Egyptian protests over Mubarak’s leadership. However, if the immigrant Canadian has not created a Linkedin profile, they are losing the advantage that being visible on the internet gives to other prospective job candidates.
Such online presence can validate a immigrant’s skills, and carry far more weight than a traditional reference. Traditional references these days have too many side bar issues with liability. Most of the time, all a reference will say is “Marc worked here from 1999 to 2004 and left on good terms”. However, through your personal branding on social media, an employer can know a lot more and that can be an advantage in the Canadian Labour Market.
Did Social Media help a revolution?
Tags: Canadian immigrants, human resources, Immigrant, immigrants, Jeff Madigan, recuriting immigrants, social media, Vancouver
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March 16th, 2012
From the feedback given by attendees at some of our accent reduction workshops, we realized that there was also a demand for writing skills improvement. On March 7, 2012, instructor Jeff Madigan conducted a new workshop at S.U.C.C.E.S.S. for writing skills. L2 Accent Reduction has clients for both speaking and writing. Some professionals feel that their writing just has too many errors for the level of work that they are doing. Jeff recognized that some aspects of writing are not very well dealt with at very high levels in your typical grammar text book. Wednesday’s workshop focused specifically on preposition usage. Prepositions are especially problematic. They occur in phrasal verbs, such as kick out, in set combinations with nouns (on TV), adjectives (free of) and verbs (believe in), and in adverbial phrases. While the first two can be memorized, it is rare to find a grammar book that outlines using prepositions adverbially. The workshop went over these usage systems and simplified aspects out of linguistics text books into a succinct form for attendees to grasp. The workshop reviews were positive so expect to see more of these in the future.
Write more Clearly at Work
Tags: accent reduction training, career, Chinese, English as a Second Language, ESL, Jeff Madigan, mispronouncing, pronounced, pronucation, pronunciation, pronunciation training
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March 13th, 2012
My father is terrible at drawing. He told me a story about drawing once. In one of his university courses for teacher education the teacher asked the students to draw a picture of an elephant sunbathing on a beach. He couldn’t recall the purpose of the activity; perhaps it had something to do with multiple intelligences. He just remembered being extremely embarrassed by his poor drawing ability. And while it’s true that some people are better at drawing, it is a skill that can be learned with practice.
Almost two years ago, I joined the Talk for Success Toastmaster’s Club at 38 West Pender Street. At first, I felt it was good for me as a native speaker of English to join a club that was mostly non-native speakers because many of the members were looking for more opportunities to interact with native speakers of English. I didn’t realize how much I could benefit and develop professionally with my public speaking skills. Although having strong fluency of a language helps to give a presentation, I was often humbled by some very engaging and moving speeches that were delivered by members who do not speak English as their first language. Just like with the art of drawing, music, and writing, the more you do it and the more you experiment with different techniques, the more well-rounded and better your skills will become.
If you are interested in visiting us at our Toastmaster’s club, feel free to drop in. We meet every Wednesday at 12 noon at 38 West Pender Street in Vancouver, BC.
The Art of Speaking
Tags: Chinese, cross-cultural, drawing, English, English accent, English as a Second Language, English speaking, ESL, foreign accents, Immigrant, immigrants, Jeff Madigan, public speaking, toastmaster's club, Vancouver
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March 8th, 2012
The Speak Clearer Accent Reduction workshop hosted at the Vancouver Public Library on March 6 had a huge turn-out. Unfortunately over 20 people had to be turned away at the door as the Peter Kaye room was filled to capacity.
Jeff Madigan Accent Reduction Trainer – See video clip when on page click “Jeff Madigan Accent Reduction Trainer” to play video.
In the short video clip, we see this large group of 60 interested participants reviewing the pronunciation of the /t/ sound. Because of the large demand, L2 Accent Reduction will be offering a supplemental workshop for those who were turned away at the S.U.C.C.E.S.S. office located at 38 West Pender in the near future. Our next Public Library workshop will be offered at 7pm on May 17th, 2012. Check back on with our website http://www.l2accent.com/index.php to stay up to date on where the next community enrichment workshop will be held.
Tags: accent reduction courses, accent reduction training, accent reduction workshop, Jeff Madigan, pronunciation training, speak clearer accent reduction workshop
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