New on-line courses

Pronunciation Matterss is offering new on-line courses. They are short sharp 'lessons' or drills which will enable you to practise problem pronunciation sounds or other pronunciation skills. You may need to improve you rword strss or sentence stress or pausing and intonation. Go to Course snippets for more examples of these

Contact us on djcorbett@optusnet.com.au

Communicating well can bring success at workplace

Pronunciation Matters offers pronunciation and workplace communication training to improve your communication at work. We use the language you require everyday at work as a means to teach pronunciation. This could be, presentations, negotiating licensing agreements, doctor/patient dialogue, customer contact or just chatting with colleagues at  lunchtime.
Many of my clients have very high levels of English but still find chatting informally and listening to the Australian accent very difficult.
Have you ever felt that you cud finally add something to the lunchtime conversation and they have already moved on to the next topic.
Pronunciation Matters specifically designed on-line and via Skype courses can help you with your chat at work. Don't under estimate the importance of workplace chat.

More diaphragmatic breathing

I am becoming more and more convinced of the usefulness of this technique for enhancing the speech volume of my Chinese students in particular. Both men and women have very quiet voices and often tend to strain them even with using a microphone.
Today I used this technique on two students. One of them, after an hour of practising, was presenting her lecture much more loudly and her voice had a lot more'strength'. The other had a much less breathy quality and the breathing technique slowed down her speech and forced her to pause more regularly.

Diaphragmatic breathing

Recently I have been putting into practice my yoga breathing techniques or diaphragmatic breathing to help students strengthen their voice. It also helps with the longer 'chunks ' of speech. A lot of students who speak the South East Asian languages are not used to longer chunks of speech and become short of breath, thus losing the rhythm of speech. This is especially the case in longer, formal lectures or presentations.

The breathing requires work and exercising the diaphragm but is well worth the effort. They learn how to project their voice and thus reduce the 'sore throat', 'losing voice' syndrome of trying to shout or strain their voice.

http://youtu.be/r0qFXKDev8c