💬 A customised English pronunciation training course with a dedicated native-speaking coach will enhance your communication skills, boost your confidence, and ensure you can be easily understood in English conversations, presentations and meetings. WHAT WILL I LEARN? 🗣️ Pronunciation for Public Speaking and Conversation is a course that identifies and resolves the issues that make people struggle to understand you. Common issues include: • speaking too fast or slow • having a confusing or flat intonation • missing or overemphasising weak syllables • stressing the wrong parts of words or sentences • not linking sounds together • talking with a rhythm that isn't natural to English We will use a mix of techniques from shadowing and repetition exercises to dramatic readings and real-time speaking practice. We will also use specialist software called Praat so that you can visualise your speech, hear yourself back and make immediate changes to your pronunciation. It's highly effective and pretty fun too! Our goal: make your speech clearer, more expressive, more enjoyable to listen to and easier to follow. WHAT MAKES YOUR LESSONS STAND OUT? First, they’re accessible. In this industry, lessons are often priced at €100 an hour or more. That model leaves many people without support. I believe quality teaching shouldn’t be a luxury. Second, they’re personal. Too many pronunciation courses recycle the same generic materials for everyone. I design each lesson around your needs and issues so the time you spend actually moves you forward. Finally, they’re research-based. A lot of pronunciation teaching still relies on outdated methods that don’t reflect what we know about how languages are learned. I use approaches grounded in linguistics and pedagogy, so your effort translates into lasting progress. WHO SIGNS UP FOR AN ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION COURSE? The Pronunciation for Public Speaking and Conversation course is ideal for people who engage in presentations, lectures, speeches or moderating, or simply for people who want to be more confident in everyday conversation. Pronunciation training benefits professionals from a variety of sectors. My clients include consultants, creatives, therapists, lecturers, teachers, performers, bankers, estate agents, hosts, broadcasters, corporate trainers, small business owners, international executives, and facilitators. ⭐ If you are looking for a more comprehensive pronunciation coaching that goes into all the sounds of your accent, please check out my other course on Apprentus, "English Pronunciation and Accent Coaching / Training with a Native Teacher". ABOUT ME My name’s Tom and I’m an English teacher from Southeast England. Now I live in the Hague, Netherlands. I teach English learners how to communicate more clearly. I have taught for various schools and agencies in the Netherlands and been frustrated by the lack of high-quality materials and expertise in the pronunciation teaching field. So in 2021 I set up my freelance teaching business to change the situation. I have over 12 years of teaching experience, and I have a master's degree in Linguistics from Leiden University, with a specialisation in English Linguistics. I am trained in speech analysis software, which is a highly effective (and fun!) tool that helps learners not only hear but also visualise their mistakes. I speak Finnish (my mum's side is from Finland), Mandarin Chinese (I lived in Taiwan for six years) and French (just because I love the sound of it). I also know bits and pieces, or smatterings as we like to say in the UK, of other languages. Tell me something in your language and I'll try to remember it! Needless to say, I am also an English language nerd and will happily talk your head off about why British people say "wa'er", what “muscles” have to do with mice, or why English spelling is so beautifully bizarre.

💬 Do you feel like your English pronunciation is holding you back? It could be that people misunderstand you because of how you pronounce a sound or stress a word. Or it could be that people understand most of what you're saying, but they find it tiring to keep up. Or maybe your accent is stigmatised, making you feel judged before you even finish speaking. These are the kinds of issues I help people work through in accent coaching. I’m Tom, a native English speaker from the UK with postgraduate training in linguistics and speech and 12 years teaching experience. I offer one-to-one English accent coaching designed around you. Together, we’ll work on the areas that matter most so that you can speak with clarity, confidence and ease – and without stigma or embarrassment – whether in everyday conversations, presentations, meetings, media, or whatever else you do. WHAT WILL I LEARN? I will show you how to train you ear and build stronger connections between your mind and your speech muscles. You’ll start with controlled practice to master new sounds, then move into spontaneous speech so that these skills become part of your everyday speaking habits. Great pronunciation is more than vowels and consonants – it’s also about fluency and expression. You’ll practise the “four Ps” of effective speaking: pauses, pitch, prominence and pace. Together, these will help you speak with clarity, confidence and impact. We will use specialist software called Praat so that you can visualise your speech, hear yourself back and make immediate changes to your pronunciation. It's highly effective and pretty fun too! ⭐ Select between Accent Modification and British English Accent Coaching. 🌍 Accent Modification identifies and targets the issues that cause misunderstandings in your own specific natural accent. This varies depending on your accent. For Dutch speakers, this usually includes: • the consonants th, p, t, k, s, sh, r, and v • the vowels in "strut" and "foot" • making intonation less flat and more meaningful • relearning the connections between sound and spelling – famously fiendish in English! This course is for clients who who need precise training in a limited time. These clients aspire to be more understandable to the people around them and do not need to adopt a fully native accent. 💂 British English Accent Coaching is a step-by-step course that teaches you to sound like a British native speaker. It teaches all of the sounds that makes British English sound unique. This includes: • shifting many vowels towards a more forward placement in the mouth • adopting British intonation patterns for questions, lists and speeches • and of course the distinct British "t" sound (Brits do love their tea, after all). This course is for clients who have a talent for picking up sounds, pride themselves on sounding like fluent native speakers and have the time to invest in long-term training WHAT MAKES YOUR LESSONS STAND OUT? First, they’re accessible. In this industry, lessons are often priced at €100 an hour or more. That model leaves many people without support. I believe quality teaching shouldn’t be a luxury. Second, they’re personal. Too many pronunciation courses recycle the same generic materials for everyone. I design each lesson around your needs and issues so the time you spend actually moves you forward. Finally, they’re research-based. A lot of pronunciation teaching still relies on outdated methods that don’t reflect what we know about how languages are learned. I use approaches grounded in linguistics and pedagogy, so your effort translates into lasting progress. WHO SIGNS UP FOR AN ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION COURSE? Pronunciation training benefits professionals and enthusiasts from a variety of sectors. My clients include individuals from diverse backgrounds such as bankers, consultants, creatives, therapists, lecturers, teachers, performers, estate agents, hosts, broadcasters, corporate trainers, small business owners, international executives, and facilitators. ABOUT ME My name’s Tom and I’m an English teacher from Southeast England, based in the Hague, Netherlands. I teach English learners how to communicate more clearly. I have taught for various schools and agencies in the Netherlands and been frustrated by the lack of high-quality materials and expertise in the pronunciation teaching field. So in 2021 I set up my freelance teaching business to change the situation. I have over 12 years of teaching experience, and I have a master's degree in Linguistics from Leiden University, with a specialisation in English Linguistics. I am trained in speech analysis software, which is a highly effective (and fun!) tool that helps learners not only hear but also visualise their mistakes. I speak Finnish (my mum's side is from Finland), Mandarin Chinese (I lived in Taiwan for six years) and French (just because I love the sound of it). I also know bits and pieces, or smatterings as we like to say in the UK, of other languages. Tell me something in your language and I'll try to remember it! Needless to say, I am also an English language nerd and will happily talk your head off about why British people say "wa'er", what “muscles” have to do with mice, or why English spelling is so beautifully bizarre.