Researchers who study second-language speech measure three separate things: how foreign an accent sounds, how much effort a listener feels they’re spending to follow it, and whether they actually understand the words correctly. A landmark study testing native English listeners found that a strong foreign accent does not necessarily reduce comprehensibility or intelligibility — the three can move independently of each other (Munro & Derwing, 1995).
This course only works on the third one. It will not make your accent sound more native, and it isn’t trying to. What it targets is the specific, usually short list of things that make listeners work harder than they should to understand you.
Try this now. Think of the last time someone asked you to repeat yourself. Try to recall exactly what you said, and whether it was a specific word, a specific sound, or the shape of the whole sentence that caused it. Write it down, even roughly. You’ll build a fuller version of this list across the course, and lesson ten turns it into a plan.
If what you actually want is to sound less foreign rather than to be understood more easily, this course isn’t the right tool — and that’s a completely reasonable thing to want, just a different goal from the one this course is built for.
