Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
Ask HN: Any good speech therapist recommendations?
1 points by ayh2 4668 days ago
Have you worked with any speech therapist to reduce your accent? If so, would you recommend them?
1 comments

Are you asking for specific speech therapy recommendations? You should specify a a city or area?

Find a person with a relevant certification or degree (audiology, speech language pathology, etc.) In California speech therapy is also licensed, I believe. It's ok to ask to see credentials, in fact most professionals will have them displayed on their walls.

Find at least three therapists with a speciality in accent reduction, unrelated to each other, so you know that the rate you are being asked to pay is in line with market rates.

Any good speech therapist will have you do speech exercises outside of the office. The office visits are about getting you aware of what you are doing wrong, and teaching you exercises and methods to be aware of it and fix it.

By exercises I mean you will be talking to yourself, if they just have you listen to a tape, that's not going to help much. It will feel odd and perhaps even be somewhat strenuous to differentiate between your types of speech.

My own experience was with a lisp when I was a child, not a foreign language speech issue.