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.

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.

BSS will be represented by Mr. Shiv Mogali at the BETT 2013 Exhibition at stall number C362. It is at this fair that Buffered Soft will launch L2 Accent Reduction Centre in India. L2 offers state-of-the-art Accent Reduction Courses and other programs that help corporate clients; students and business persons achieve growth and career progress in their respective fields. It offers its services in several Asian countries, including China, by making it possible for individuals to communicate clearly and effectively in English so that unintelligible language and incorrect pronunciation is never a barrier to communication. L2 Accent Reduction will be introduced to the Indian educational arena by BSS in order to facilitate L2’s services in India.

Many students, who relocate to Canada, or other parts of the English speaking world, have trouble communicating because of problems that may be carried over from their first language. These courses will improve their pronunciation so that unintelligible communication barriers are eliminated. Students will have better understanding of the lectures, and asking questions in class will also become easier.

The courses will promote an on-the-go experience in the sense that they will be made available on smartphones as well as tablets.  No need to be confined to a lecture hall. Whether or not an individual chooses to study in Canada or remain in China, they will still have access to world class courses.

Many internationally trained professionals have been in an akward situation where they were misjudged.  One client told us about how he was misjudged at his bank.  When the bank teller could not understand his pronunciation of Trafalgar street, she spoke very slowly and said that she had to call her manager.  She gestured with her finger on an imaginary rotory phone while saying “call the manager”.  This is very frustrating, especially when on paper, the person is fluent in English.

When studying at University of British Columbia, Howard, who moved to Canada when he was 16, said accented speech was not a big concern.  ”Sometimes I think it hurt my mark when I had an assignment that involved a presentation.  But usually those kind of assignments were part of group work so I didn’t feel that all the responsibility was on me.”  If anything, Howard noted that some of his professors were hard to understand.  Howard never thought his accent would be viewed differently outside of academia until he started looking for work after graduation.

During the job hunt, Howard found that he struggled on the phone.  Face to face interviews didn’t bother him so much. During his time at university, he had done a lot of networking and clubs.  ”I didn’t feel shy”, he said, “I’m an outgoing person.”  The biggest problem was the initial phone call.  ”I don’t want my accent to be my first impression.”  When Howard got a call to arrange a time for an interview, phone conversation was difficult and he felt it set a bad atmosphere for the rest of the job vetting process.

With accent reduction training, Howard learned that some of the sounds he made were influenced by his background of learning English in Hong Kong and Australia.  ”I didn’t know that 15 and 50 sounded the same to other people when I said that.”  When you confirm your interview time is 2:15, you want to make sure that they don’t hear 2:50.

Howard isn’t alone.  University enrollments by students like him are steadily increasing.  Many Ivy league universities tout their demographic diversity, however the reality of the job market is not as accommodating.  Kurt Hill, former executive director of the Career Management Centre at Simon Fraser University sees value in accent reduction training.  ”Graduates tend to enter the workforce with all of the qualifications, education, and ambition, but those with strong foreign accents often hit a huge roadblock during their very first phone interview.  They may have a great vocabulary, but many employers have had a hard time seeing beyond the accent.” says Hill.

Some universities have taken these concerns on by providing workshops for students that can improve their ability to get jobs.  MIT, for example, in order to combat the stereotype that its students are nerdy, provides Charm School.  In Charm School students can learn business etiquette related to how to dress, how to dine, how to give negative information, and more.  Our ability to give a good first impression means identifying our own weaknesses in social settings.  After that, it is just a matter of practicing so that our weaknesses no longer stand out.  Practice makes perfect.

Birds eat worms.

In this sentence, there are three beats.  The subject, the main verb, and the object take the stress.

The birds will eat the worms.

In this sentence, there are also three beats.  The noun heads are birds, and worms; the main verb is eat.  All other function words take on reduced forms.  The becomes a quick and joins the word bird or worms.  Will sounds more like el, and can join on to the end of the word bird, or to the main verb eat.

Thebirdsel eat theworms.

Learning to identify these parts of speech and knowing when and what sounds to reduce will greatly improve the sound of your spoken English.

Leaders of the Columbia College Entrepreneur Club, Baiaman Urmatbek and Akbuken Shektibay, met up with L2 Accent Reduction at a workshop given at SFU.  They invited Jeff Madigan to speak at their club, not just about voice training, but about how he became an entrepreneur.  ”It’s good for our club to get speakers like Jeff, our club is one of the biggest at Columbia College, says Shektibay.  L2 Accent hopes that they have inspired the students at Columbia College and given them some strategies to help them in their future after graduating.

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.

For Jennifer, the daughter of an immigrant, L2 Accent Reduction Centre, provides training that was inspired from her father’s struggles. “My dad first came to this country in 1970 at the age of 28. He was university educated and spoke fluent English and yet when he spoke no one understood him. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve always wanted to find a way to help individuals speak clearer and relate better at work.” Jennifer says.

Jennifer went on to study Linguistics and Speech Pathology and obtained her Master’s in Education to equip herself to help people like her father. Her work also brought her together with her husband Jeff, whose background in English fluency tests such as TOEFL and IELTS, have helped L2 Accent Reduction Centre provide English support in all areas of language training. Today, the L2 Accent Reduction Centre has courses in Speaking, Writing, Accent Reduction Training and Test Preparation. “During my career, I have seen so many educated people like my father, work survival jobs, because they are not understood and are not given a chance for advanced employment. While there are a lot of great companies that will support their diverse staff, there are many individuals who cannot get funding.”, explains Jennifer Madigan.

Jennifer has created the Fresh Start Program, a program that provides English support to single immigrant parents free of charge. The program was inspired by her sister, who was a single mom, and was the only single parent to ever graduate from SFU’s rigorous Co-op business program. In 2009, Jennifer’s sister established the Pay it Forward Bursary at SFU for single parents, and encouraged Jennifer to start a special program for single immigrant parents. Jennifer feels that it is one small way she can help people who have sacrificed so much to make a better life for their children just as her father had done. The L2 Accent Reduction Centre also works with a number of agencies such as Multicultural Helping House, SUCCESS, Arrive BC, Douglas College Skills Connect, CGA and provides workshops on Accent Reduction.