Effectiveness of Intense Accent Modification Training With Refugees From Burma

Abstract

Purpose: This pilot research project sought to determine if an intensive accent modification training program that included See the Sound-Visual Phonics and prosodic gestures improved articulation, prosody, and intelligibility measures in refugees from Burma. Participants: Four individuals (two men, two women) aged 20–67 participated in this study, and they were recruited from a state organization supporting refugees who have resettled in the United States. Method: All participants completed the Proficiency in Oral English Communication (POEC) and Assessment of Intelligibility of Dysarthric Speech (AIDS) to measure pre- and posttraining changes. The duration of this study was 6 weeks and consisted of 1 week of pretesting, 4 weeks of accent modification training, and 1 week of posttesting. Participants attended a total of twelve 50-min accent modification training sessions, including eight individual sessions (twice per week) and four group sessions (once per week), which provided a functional way to practice newly acquired skills in a scripted conversational-type format. Trained and untrained articulation and prosody probes were used to establish baselines and measure change. Results: All four participants showed gains across articulation and prosody (in untrained and trained items). On pre- and posttest measures, three of the four participants also made gains on the broad measures of the AIDS and the POEC. Conclusion: Findings support that a brief and intensive multimodality accent modification program can be beneficial.