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.  And it will give you information on my audiocourse, currently McGraw-Hill's top-selling ESL course, Improve Your American English Accent.

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 instruction, or group instruction I can arrange for you; and
•  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: 

Saturday morning classes September 11 - October 23 (with a one-week break); and November 6 - December 11; book now. 

Evening classes Thursdays, September 16 - October 21; and Wednesdays November 3 - December 8; book now.

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