Introducing… The Accent Handbook

by

9781350243330



Introducing… The Accent Handbook

December 10, 2024
Acting, Articles, Book Extracts

Need to learn an accent for an audition? Got the part but can’t quite grasp the sounds? Want to expand your repertoire?

The Accent Handbook: A Practical Guide to Learning Accents is a novel approach to accent-learning, providing a practical, digestible and customisable way of learning any accent of your choosing. Drawing on the authors’ extensive experience coaching students and leading stage and screen actors, the book offers more than 200 empowering exercises to actively explore and hone accent features. You can dip in and out or go from cover to cover, depending on your aims, what you’re learning or how much time you have.

The book is accompanied by a wide-ranging and diverse library of contemporary accent recordings from across the globe. Uniquely, it also offers a guide to finding accent samples and getting more out of your listening.

A short extract below from the book’s section on ‘How to Listen’ offers a peak into some of what this book offers.

_______________________________________________________________

How to listen

You already know how to listen. Everyone with the ability to hear listens all day long. However, we’re often multitasking as we listen, processing what someone’s said, anticipating what they’re going to say and finding a reply to keep the conversation flowing. While this may serve you very well in everyday life, learning an accent requires a slightly different form of listening.

The following exercises suggest various ways to listen for accent learning and provide tips to help you get the most out of a recording. Try them and see what works for you.

Detach from distractions

Cast your eyes down or close them, use headphones or find a quiet space. This can help you to focus more on what you hear.

Release your jaw and let the breath flow

This helps you access your auditory cortex (the part of your brain which processes sound).

Listen repeatedly

When first exposed to something new, you’re often just taking in the experience. You might not take anything specific away from the first listen other than roughly what the speaker has said. Listening again allows you to get past the content of the speech and the overall sound so you can start picking up on specifics.

Listen silently at first

Try listening to your recording at least twice without imitating. If you speak too early, you might reproduce your own habitual sounds, or what you ‘think’ you heard after a brief listen. Keep a notepad nearby so you can scribble down what you notice before imitating.

Listen or watch

Some get more out of watching a video of an accent speaker rather than just listening to the audio. Others prefer to focus solely on sound. Do whatever you find most helpful and if you’re not sure, experiment.

***

Exercise: Don’t Fight the Fidget!

To help focus when listening to the accent

For some, listening is easiest when fully focused on the task without any distractions and without doing anything else simultaneously. For others, it can be more useful to add another activity to help relieve excess energy. This can free the mind to take in the sounds.

If you fit into the second category, or if you’re unsure and want to discover what works for you, here are some suggestions:

  • Move about your space.
  • Tap your hand, foot or pencil.
  • Fold laundry.
  • Knit.
  • Play with modelling clay, dough or plasticine.
  • Colour something in.
  • Knot or braid string.
  • Cut shapes out of paper.
  • Doodle.
  • Make some marks on the page that relate to what you’re hearing – dots, dashes, lines, blobs, shapes and so on.

Doing something enjoyable while listening to the accent can build positive associations with the sounds, shapes and patterns you’re hearing. Listening ‘unconsciously’ while doing other things is a great way of becoming more familiar with the accent without getting overwhelmed.

Exercise: First Impressions

To start making observations about the accent

You need: an accent recording (audio only), something to write with and on

This exercise offers an initial way of listening to and making observations about the accent. Before you play the recording, you could do the exercises Zen Master or Don’t Fight the Fidget! to help you focus.

Release the jaw and the breath and play the recording once through. Just listen, don’t copy. Consider what went through your head as you listened. Was it what they were saying, how they were saying it or a bit of both? Did any other thoughts crop up? If so, acknowledge them, even jot them down if that helps, and put them aside. Listen again, focusing solely on how they’re speaking and jot down anything you notice. Use descriptive words, shapes, pictures or anything else. Look at what you’ve noted. These are your first impressions of the accent and are a valuable starting point. You might have noticed something about the rhythm or pitch. If so, you could head to Patterns (p. 56). Perhaps you noted down words with interesting sounds in them. If so, go to Sounds (p. 74) to focus on vowels and consonants. Maybe you noticed the overall quality of the accent, in which case head to Shapes (p. 47).

Perhaps you have opinions or judgements of the accent in your notes. Confront these now. Biases are inevitable but remember the job: to embody another’s experience. Holding on to bias can be a barrier to achieving this.

______________________________________________________________

The Accent Handbook: A Practical Guide to Learning Accents is now available via Bloomsbury.com