C.J. Childs -- Foreign Accent Reduction

Welcome to Houston.   And welcome to this website -- a work in progress.  These pages will offer you some helps for improving your American English accent, and tell you how to arrange private sessions or join an upcoming class..

Since you've come to this site, chances are good that you are not a native-speaker of the very special -- and confusing -- brand of English that we speak here in North America.  Don't worry.  Houston is blessed with talent, and a lot of it isn't native-born.  The folks in our town sometimes complain about new accents; but they complain about other North American accents, too, so don't take their comments too seriously.  We ask you where you're from, but we probably don't mean to be rude.  We ask each other that question, too.

If you didn't come to North America as a very young person, you'll probably never sound as if you were born here; but that's OK.  We want to be an international city, and we'll get used to new accents.  But if you think your efforts at communication could be easier; if the telephone is often a problem; if the natives sometimes look at you with blank expressions, maybe I know a few things that will help.

On this website, you'll find information about

• my background; 
• my commercial audiocourse, Improve Your American English Accent, distributed by McGraw-Hill via bookstores and the internet;
• upcoming courses I'm offering to the general public; and
• private individual and group instruction I can bring to your location.

Eventually, I hope to have a page with a speech sample and some notes about the speech aspects that make this English sound the way it does.

If you have a question or comment (or problems with this website), please Contact me.

And thanks for your interest.   

Charlsie

Coming Up:

 Evening classes AUGUST 27 to OCTOBER 8  

 PLEASE NOTE: Because of hurricane damage, our September 24th class will be at LLU, 2990 Richmond Avenue, 6th floor.  We'll be near the elevator; look for us at the usual time 

and Tuesdays  OCTOBER  28 to DECEMBER 9, 2008

Any questions?  Please email or call me for answers.  Any glitches with my website?  I want to know.

charlsie@cjchilds-accentreduction.com

or phone: 832-287-0494