Immigrants aim to smooth careers by not tripping on their tongues

An accent can seriously hurt the opportunities for international professional workers in this country. Sometimes it is because they are misunderstood, other times people think when people have an accent, they are stupid. This company helps people learn an American accent. DP

BY DIONNE WALKER, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
AlburyParkPress.com: Armed with a tape recorder and endless patience, Sharon Heffley has spent the last 17 years unraveling the knot of mispronunciations and garbled syllables common to many international professionals.

Heffley operates the Accent Modification Center out of her home in northern Virginia, helping upwardly mobile professionals smooth accents that may be holding them back.

"Most of my clients do not come saying they want to assimilate so that nobody knows that they weren't born here," Heffley said during an interview. "They want to be more competitive with their American counterparts."

Dean, a 40-something computer engineer who would not give his last name, got the Heffley treatment during a recent lesson. He'd spent five minutes wrestling with a common household word and was getting nowhere.

"Bezz. Bezz. Bezzzzzz," he said.

"You must feel the tongue go up," chirped Heffley, a short, bespectacled woman with a firm nature and an unerring ear. "Do it again, 10 to 15 times!"

A dozen attempts later, success: The Chinese-American man correctly pronounced "beds."
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