Communicate Clearly and Confidently in American English
Dr. Catherine Ojakangas provides individualized American accent coaching for business professionals who want to communicate more clearly and confidently with colleagues, clients, and senior leaders.
As a PhD neuroscientist and nationally certified speech-language pathologist, Dr. Ojakangas has more than 25 years of experience helping professionals from diverse language backgrounds improve their American English pronunciation and communication skills. Programs are individually tailored because every client has unique speech patterns, professional responsibilities, and communication goals.
Coaching programs are conducted online, and begin with an intensive North American English Pronunciation evaluation. This evaluation is 2.0 hours in length and is recorded and analyzed over several hours by Dr. O. The following areas are assessed:
- First, American English pronunciation for sounds and intonation to pinpoint the speech pronunciation details one needs to work on – the articulation, intonation, stress and speech rate – and a personal accent improvement plan based on the client’s unique needs and goals is formulated.
- Second, business language skills for speaking with customers, colleagues, and superiors. Business etiquette and language used by businesses today is assessed. From casual to formal interactions, business gambits and special business terminology in the client’s area is assessed and targeted, if needed. Clients often work on effective ways to begin, extend, and end conversations, and how to interrupt, correct, or disagree with others acceptably while speaking American English.
- Thirdly, common etiquette and communication guidelines for special communication situations in American English, including business meetings, presentations and telephone conversations. This includes use of common American idioms, gambits (words used to smoothly begin, end, or interrupt conversations).
- American English Pronunciation of specialized vocabulary needed for a client’s specialized business field, as well as use of business jargon, slang, and language to use in written memos, emails, and more formal written documents.
- A full set of materials, individually chosen for each client (pdf workbooks, audio files) are included with each course which clients download to their phone and/or computers.
- Coaching programs usually last 3 to 4 months as this is the time required for the new neural patterns in the brain to create new habits (of which speech is one!).
- Post course evaluations have consistently shown that clients can improve at least 50% in structured speaking tasks and most improve much more!
