Resources for improving accent

[Querneus]

Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson Ian. 1996. The Sounds of the World's Languages. p. 232.

[Tumlare]

Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson Ian. 1996. The Sounds of the World's Languages. p. 232.

Thank you!

[bombobuffoon]

Your level for improving your accent is going to depend on your ear for the language and how to pickup certain characteristics of words.

Each language has a rhythm and I think you're on the right track in isolating sentences and listening and repeating. You take it further by doing even more listening and repetitions focusing on the rhythm of the sentence. Let's say you were learning a song - would you be able to to sing fairly closely along with 20 reps? If you were a professional singer then perhaps yes, but for the average person, probably not. If you were learning a new movement in sports, could you watch and replicate that movement in 20 attempts and then bring it out again at another odd time? For me, the answer is no and a lot more reps are needed.

The very slow process is after you have got a sentence spoken fairly accurately, how can you change the small details. For that, you need the help of a native speaker who is interested in those small, minute details. You have to fairly picky because as people have said, a lot of native speakers in your target language would say you're already good enough.

High reps are only part of the answer. Of that I am certain. There are people who train at some sports yet see minimal improvement. There are some hidden ingredients to success beyond repetition. A feedback cycle for sure will help...somewhat.

Working with a native, together with high reps over time, repeating the cycle, that would surely see a lot of improvement. I can maybe get help and maybe even convince someone to work with me for a while. Whether or not I will get consistent feedback is something I'd have to very tightly manage myself. Could be tricky.

Otherwise I have seen people using Audacity to do some kind of wave analysis for this purpose. I have no idea how that works but the microphone is not going to lie.

Someone must know how this kind of stuff works.