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Archive for the ‘Accent Reduction For Businesses’ Category

Free Accent Reduction Training Courses

Wednesday, March 27th, 2013

As a business owner, do you struggle with communication issues related to customer service? Communication with employees? Clarity of speech? If so, L2 Accent wants you to know about our accent reduction or voice projection courses, worth up to $1500, that are being offered for free through BC Chamber of Commerce. In order to be eligible:

Your business must:

As an owner you must:

have fewer than 5 employees

Have no provincially, nationally, or internationally recognized certifications

Have no university or post-secondary degree or diploma

Additional Requirements

A resident of British Columbia

Legally entitled to work in Canada

19 years of age or older

Not a full-time post-secondary student

Not a high-school student

Not participating in another LMA funded program

Have a valid municipal business license or an Incorporation Number, or a CRA Tax Number

If you are eligible and interested, go to http://www.bcmicrobusiness.com/eligibility to apply.

L2 Accent is offering:

Communication Skills for Business Professionals

In this course, we will be exploring different topics to train the muscles of the mouth to produce North American sounds based on the problem areas of the client. These proven clinical techniques will result in the acquisition of an excellent professionally and socially enhancing North American accent that will help individuals to speak clearer and relate better at work and in social situations. It will help business owners to have the confidence they need to communicate in everyday business environments. (Duration and Value: 8 sessions – $1250.00; 10 sessions – $1500.00)

L2 Speak Clearer Program – Online

This program will help you produce the correct techniques by watching and listening to high quality video and audio instructional video. Once you have mastered the technique, you will be asked to submit your recordings. A Speech Professional will then analyze your recordings and provide you with helpful techniques to correct any problems you may have. (Duration and Value: Up to one year of access to 24/7 online content – $550.00)

You will learn:

Clearer production of consonant and vowel sounds
Rhythm, stress, and intonation patterns of native speakers
Strategies to produce clear speech

Presentation Skills for Business Professionals

This course provides communication solutions for those who have problems giving good presentations. This is mainly due to breathing techniques and how one is able to project, modulate and manipulate their voice to deliver entertaining presentations without damaging the vocal chords. Work with renowned voice coach Jan Cooper from Pump Records. (Duration and Value: 8 sessions – $1250.00; 10 sessions – $1500.00)

Writing Skills for Business Professionals

This writing course will help business owners to gain confidence in their writing abilities. With written output, we help refine a person’s writing by identifying weaknesses in structure and by developing strategies to “code switch” between formal and informal registers to reduce both instances of communication breakdowns and conflicts that result from incorrect assumptions connected to using the wrong tone of voice. (Duration and Value: 3 months – $350.00; 6 months – $650.00)

How will this course help?

Writing training makes use of an editing service so that clients improve their performance through practice that is both meaningful and in context to their business.
Clients can send an unlimited number of documents or emails to have corrected and edited.

Tags: accent reduction class, accent reduction courses, accent reduction training, free accent reduction, Vancouver, voice training courses
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Micro Businesspersons Allotted $3.1 Million of Business Training, says Premier Christy Clark – L2 Accent Reduction Provides Free Coaching to British Columbians

Monday, March 11th, 2013

Premier Christy Clark has recently announced the allocation of $3.1 million under the ‘Canada Starts Here: The BC Jobs Plan’. These funds are aimed at fueling the training pilot program which will focus on the skills enhancement of British Columbian micro business owners. There are over 1.200 micro businesspersons eligible under the Labor Market Agreement, each of whom will have $1,500 worth of business training that will aid in the progress of their business, and consequently contribute in the long-term advancement of the state. http://www.newsroom.gov.bc.ca/2012/05/premier-announces-skills-training-for-micro-businesses.htm

L2 Accent Reduction Centre is an excellent training provider for the Micro Business Program as many business owners have a great need to communicate well both in business writing and every day speaking tasks.

L2 Accent Reduction Centre is offering courses with no charge to the business owner; these funds will be covered through the Microbusiness Program. These courses include accent reduction training, which is essential to clear communication, especially when dealing with customer service issues. Similarly, voice projection training and writing courses would greatly improve the oral and written discourse of business for these small-business owners.

Business owners, who would like to take advantage of the world-class oral and written training provided by L2 Accent Reduction Centre, can contact http://www.chamberlearningnetwork.com/. However, the candidates need to comply with all the conditions set by the province for being entitled to free training by L2 Accent Reduction Centre.

Tags: accent reduction courses, accent reduction training, English as a Second Language, Jeff Madigan, pronunciation, pronunciation training
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BC Businesses Diversify Staff and Look to Supportive Training from L2 Accent Reduction Centre

Monday, November 5th, 2012

Is your pizza being delivered by an agriculture engineer from Dubai?

We have all heard the familiar story of how highly-skilled, internationally-trained professionals are wasting time in low-wage survival jobs. Does this happen because of inadequate language skills? Is it an inability to culturally integrate? Were immigrants misled by a promise that their skills were in demand?

Each story is unique and there are successes as much as failures but the good news is that British Columbia has a strong diverse workforce and its companies are leading the way in finding ways to harness the power and benefits that diversity brings. On Nov.1, 2012, BCHRMA’s Diversity Roundtable will host an expert panel discussion that will address communication skills and employee engagement for diverse workplaces.

Raj Sharma, HR Manager for BC Hydro will relate his experiences with training and development for internationally trained professionals. BC Hydro has been recognized as a leader in diversity initiatives for its staff, a process it started over 15 years ago after realizing how dominated its workforce had become by locally born male engineers, who were accustomed to assignments in isolated projects over the vast uninhabited areas of British Columbia. Today, many of BC Hydro’s operations have centralized and its workforce has changed too.

ACL Services is also well known for having been a leader in creating diversity policies for its staff. Victoria Darnbrough explains how diversity polices in the workplace can give all workers a fair and equal chance and can define clear boundaries for any workplace conflict that may arise due to cultural difference.

Jeff Madigan, Director of Programs at L2 Accent Reduction Center, works with many large corporations and will discuss how a person’s communication skills can become a barrier and how to address accented speech without offending but by empowering. “Because pronunciation is not a focus in a majority of language learning programs, many workers welcome the idea of becoming better communicators to express themselves without regret or hesitation.”, says Madigan.

Communication skills improvement is a growing area for training and development, and it’s not just for the immigrant worker. Conflict resolution, public speaking, presentation skills, and negotiation are all areas where employees and companies receive benefits from training. However, for the immigrant worker, communication skills can pose as a larger obstacle, since it is often wrongly associated as having to do with language fluency.

L2 Accent Reduction Center provides workplace speech training solutions to address unintelligible accented speech and other related communication skills obstacles that can provide barriers to internationally trained professionals in their place of work.

Tags: accent reduction courses, accent reduction training, English as a Second Language, Immigrant, immigrants, Jeff Madigan, Vancouver, workplace, workplace bc
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L2 Accent Reduction Now in Toronto

Friday, August 17th, 2012

L2 Accent Reduction is happy to announce our new presence in Toronto through our newest accent reduction specialist licensee,

Josef Addleman

Josef brings to the table his combined experience in ESL instruction and voice and theatre. Having been an actor, Joseph is aware of fundamental techniques that aid in the delivery of spoken English. Although Joseph has been teaching accent reduction for over 5 years, by becoming a licensee and delivering the L2 Accent Reduction training to his own Toronto based practice, Joseph feels confident that he will be bringing his practice to a new level.

Josef Addleman – Toronto Area Accent Reduction Specialist

“I really like the idea that someone would be supporting me as a business coach. I already have the accent reduction training, but I wanted the whole package. You cannot run a business solely on your academic knowledge, you need business help along the way. L2 Accent Reduction’s coaching program provided just what I was looking for.” – Josef Addleman

If you are in the Toronto area, we encourage you to contact Josef, at

1-416-731-1501 and find out how he can help you improve your communication skills.

Tags: accent reduction, accent reduction courses, accent reduction in toronto, accent reduction licensee, accent reduction specialist
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Oat in a Boat!?!? – Proper English Pronunciation

Thursday, July 19th, 2012

At L2 Accent Reduction Centre we offer many different accent reduction courses, including online and one-on-one training to help you speak Proper English Pronunciations.

Here’s a short story about Proper English Pronunciation:

The way Canadians pronounce their diphthongs (double vowels), especially in the word “about” has been the butt of many American jokes. We are often fabled to pronounce the word as aboot or aboat. The particularly humorous phrase “oat and aboat in a boat” is frequently attributed to our quirky Canadian accents. On the northern side of the 49^th Parallel, most Canadians are clueless as to why Americans continue to relentlessly poke fun at them while repeating the word “about” in a preposterous accent. Most Canadians will agree that they do not say the word ‘out’ as oot or oat. Here, at L2 Accent Reduction Centre, clients frequently ask our specialists about the difference between words such as ‘rider’ and ‘writer’. Often, the environment in which they learned English did not distinguish between the vowels in these words, and it often comes as a surprise when Canadians have trouble understanding their speech because of the lack of vowel distinctions.

Oat in a Boat!?!? Proper English Pronunciation

Canadian Pop Culture

However, the truth is that Canadians do pronounce their vowels differently from Americans and what results from this difference is the perception of the Canadian accent that has served as a common stereotype the world over. That being said, what Canadians are not doing is saying ‘about’ as aboat or ‘house’ as hoose. In the linguistic phenomenon called Canadian Raising, vowel combinations such as the /ay/ sound in the word ‘five’ and the /aw/ sound in the word ‘crowd’ are raised to the higher vowel combinations /Ãy/ and /Ãw/ respectively before a voiceless consonant, such as /t/, /s/, f/, etc. This results in a vowel differentiation between the words ‘writer’ and ‘rider’ or ‘house’ (verb) and ‘house’ (noun). Americans may perceive this vowel difference to be more exaggerated than it truly is and hear the high vowels /o/ or /u/ when Canadians are engaging in their characteristic vowel raising. Of course, there are other aspects that distinguish Canadian English from General American English, but Canadian Raising is perhaps the most salient and well-known characteristic of Canadian speech. As always, it is important to remember that, just like everywhere else, it’s unwise to generalize and Canadian accents can vary widely from coast to coast.

At L2 Accent Reduction Centre we offer many different accent reduction courses, including online and one-on-one training to help you speak Proper English Pronunciations.

Tags: accent reduction courses, accent reduction training, American accent, Canadian Accent, foreign accents, Jeff Madigan, mispronouncing, online english training, pronucation, pronunciation, pronunciation training
Posted in Accent Reduction For Businesses, Accent Reduction Techniques, Jeff Madigan, Language and Culture, online learning | Comments Off