All Posts by Ashley

I was recently coaching a woman from the Czech Republic who lives in England and works as a healthy and safety officer. She’s spoken English for over 20 years and has lived in England for most of her life, but struggles with pronunciation. Language is pretty important in her job and communication as well as […]

Have you heard of the expression ‘lost at sea’? In my experience, when it comes to British English pronunciation, that’s how most learners feel. Partly because there seems to be no rules to follow - and you can’t trust the spelling, that’s for sure! When I trained as a voice coach I discovered a phonetician […]

The spelling of British English is pretty confusing, right? I’m sure that if you did a degree in Linguistics, studied the etymology of words and spoke Latin then you’ll know exactly why and when to use certain pronunciations but the physiological business of ‘how’ to pronounce English words might still be a mystery. Just take […]

Have you ever considered how much of speaking and comprehension is visual? Try watching a film with the volume off and notice that your eyes go to the next best cue for what the speaker is saying - the lips. Do you notice how the shape and position of the lips clearly helps to distinguish […]

Quite recently, I was coaching someone from Spain and we were exploring the difference between the KIT and FLEECE vowel sounds (so for instance 'slip' and 'sleep'). She had a habit of making the KIT vowel sound too long in duration, which made it sound more like the FLEECE vowel. This was important for her, […]

'How do I integrate these new habits into live, everyday conversation?', is a question and challenge I hear a lot from people who want to change their accent and pronunciation. It would be great to be able to offer a quick-fix solution (and I'm working on it) but like any learning, especially when it comes […]

I'm a big believer in observation and imitation as a means of learning. In fact, it's what we tend to do as children - we watch the world and the people around us and try out their behaviour, their language, the way they use their body, and through this exposure and imitation we learn new […]

I've worked with a lot of amazing people over the years and at some point in the coaching many of them express how difficult they feel it is for them to transfer their newly found pronunciation skills into their real lives and real conversations. But there was one particular person I was coaching a number […]

I was coaching someone from Italy who had been speaking English for over 20 years but was tired of being asked 'where are you from?' and 'could you repeat that please?'. We were at the end of only our third session and he said, 'so when am I going to start sounding like a native […]

You know that there are some secret spelling rules that unlock the pronunciation of British English, don't you? Here are the 5 ‘must-know’ ways to help you speak in a standard British English accent with more confidence and clarity. It is possible for you to speak British English with fluency and ease, but if you’re […]