Do you use any special method for accent improving?

[Voytek]

There's so many methods for accent improving on the Internet and it's hard to find something suitable. Do you have any special method which works for you?

[jeff_lindqvist]

It's work in progress. It's also of minor importance (although I think I'm fairly good at mimicking). I have relatively little contact with speakers of my target languages. The number of times I speak anything else besides Swedish and English amount to a handful (typically polyglot meetups and holidays abroad). If all I'm going to be is a tourist (I also hate travelling), I don't need a perfect accent.

Activities I find helpful are listening, repeating, shadowing, reading aloud... Maybe I've forgotten some.

[smallwhite]

I start learning a language by reading "German Language" etc on Wikipedia, then "German Phonology" etc. I try to understand and memorise as much as possible from that phonology page, and I go back to it every now and then.

That's the most "special" method that I use. Shadowing course audio and reading stuff aloud is not special, I believe.

[DangerDave2010]

Studying phonetics, reading out loud, and tons of listening.

[Voytek]

Thank you, guys.


Any other ideas?

[Xenops]

Thank you, guys.


Any other ideas?

I meet with a tutor once a week to coach my French pronunciation.

[tarvos]

Directed accent coaching, good knowledge of the target language phonology and of the mechanical production processes in the mouth, lots of careful listening

[NIKOLIĆ]

Learn how to pronounce all the phonemes, practice pronouncing words in isolation, move up to sentences, work on your intonation and prosody, be inquisitive, listen a lot, keep your ears open, find your voice, test and validate, rinse and repeat.

[aokoye]

I haven't had this issue with my main L2 for some reason (with feedback given from a number of L1 speakers), but my gut suggestion is essentially what everyone else has said. Study the phonology of your target language (using IPA), speak as much as possible, and actually pay attention to how you're pronouncing words. Also realize that different dialects of your L2 are going to pronounce things differently, sometimes drastically so (and yes you are learning a dialect, there is no nul-dialect).

[DangerDave2010]

I used to listen to my own voice on the microphone, through a live feedback loop, it helped me to become aware of how do I really sounded, and make adjustments. Unfortunatly audio processing on modern computers causes a delay that makes this method impossible.