Speech Pathologist Hears Music in Language

Speech language pathologist Laura Larsen-Stevovich hears music within language.

Her upcoming talk at the Westborough Public Library will focus on recognizing this music, and how it affects communication.

This presentation is at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 19.

Larsen-Stevovich said Friday she'll explain accent reduction, importance of understanding "the habits of your own language, and how you carry them over and interfere with your learning English." She also will discuss common difficulties, such as the "th" sound.

"You can have an accent and you can speak completely clearly, and people can understand you. But, it depends on intonation issues. If you don't get that right, then people won't understand you," Larsen-Stevovich said.

"It's not so much how heavy your accent is. It's how well you understand how to do the music."

Accent reduction has become a practice among speech pathologists for about 20 years, she said. "Very few" speech pathologists specialize in accent reduction, she said.

"It's more about communication than it is about accent. It's kind of a misleading term, because you can hear that term, and a lot of people think, 'That's really negative. You're trying to make people homogenized and lose their culture.' Some people really react to it that way. But, what it really is about communicating more clearly," Larsen-Stevovich said.

"A lot of people are really hampered in their jobs. They may be very intelligent and highly skilled, but they can't get ahead because they can't communicate in meetings" and are hard to understand on the phone, she said.

Larsen-Stevovich said some speech pathologists practicing accent reduction work with regional accents, and performers "who want to take on another accent."