SO YOU'RE READY TO DEEPEN YOUR SENSE OF BELONGING?
OWN IT, YOU KNOW?
There's ways to get there.
HERE'S HOW IT'S GOING TO GO
We're going to delve into the world of pragmatics, identity, and the technical tools that will help us embrace both on a very practical level.
MY STORY
My journey as a speaker started for reals when I was fifteen years of age: I was thrown into a small-town American context, where there was very little space for my being different, in terms of how I used my voice in particular.
As much as I enjoyed being this unique foreigner, a quirky adolescent who felt she wasn't meant to fit in in the first place, I struggled terribly with communicating what I meant to communicate in a voice that was both mine AND still treated as one-of-theirs, you know?
So for the past 17 years I have been continuously looking into and trying out all sorts of approaches to personal phonetics building. The kind that gives you that ever-wanted sense of belonging.
HOW DO I TEACH?
Lovingly, you guys :) That's the central idea to how I got about guiding you towards your goals as language users.
My job is to inform you, to demo and to help you develop a healthy approach to what you're going to do with the new information, whether it regards sounds, tone, melody, or listening, noticing, developing a new side to yourself.
I'll be inviting you to construct an English-speaking self that isn't in conflict with your first-language self yet is positively bilingual and bicultural, in terms of sound AND feeling.
MY VALUES
Be informed and make choices that help you open up - to yourself and others.
With so many wonderfully talented people I have worked with, somehow nagging oneself is thought of as the way to go, as some kind of pertinent ingredient. Well, it ain't. Hard work and fun play will get you there - and lack of self-support will have you lagging behind.
I would love to show you how physical awareness, psychological groundedness, and the general chill-and-play philosophy in all the phonetics-related work you do is thE recipe to go with. Not much space left for I-ain't-good-enough-ness there.
