I have been struggling to pronounce the letter R my whole life. It has led to a lot of communication problems as well as confidence issues. When I first started seeing Emily, she helped me identify exactly which types of R sounds I was struggling with. She was very helpful in providing me exercises to do in between sessions and recording practice audio for me to use while driving to work. The pacing was great and helped me train myself to pronounce the sounds correctly without having to think about it. I made a before and after recording of myself and the improvement was massive! I had both a mix of in-person and online sessions and they were both equally good. She was very flexible with my schedule as well! A lot of the issues I've had in the past with communication have gone away thanks to Emily's help! read more

Emily is a very nice and dedicated coach. She helped me with not only my accent reduction but also English writing and interviews. She always comes to the sessions with helpful materials and her desire to help people, which makes every session worthy. I would highly recommend Emily! read more

Emily has been working with me since the beginning of this year on speech and accent training. As an ESLer who has studied English for 20+ years, I sometimes still find it difficult to fully understand the native speakers of different region and culture groups or make myself fully understood. But over the years I have been told that accent reduction is like the icing on the cake and it would be very difficult to do so for adults. One day I bumped into Emily and her practice and decided to give it a try. I was amazed after just one meeting, when she identified a series of sounds that I had never paid full attention to when learning English using the metrics of percentage of accuracy. These are also easily correctable if I pay attention! Throughout our sessions, she also pointed out a lot of things that were never formally discussed in English books published anywhere, or "tricks" native speakers naturally learn as they grow up. She is patient and accurate and has a wealth of knowledge on English communication and pronunciation. I'm thrilled to see my pronunciation improvement after working with her and would like to highly recommend her to ESL people who would like to make themselves better communicators! read more

When I came to the United States 15 years ago from Colombia, I could only speak Spanish. Although I tried to study English in high school, I wasn't successful. I've taken many ESL classes since I've been here but never managed to get beyond a very basic level of English. I was able to get by, but I often made serious grammar mistakes and my speech wasn't very smooth, so people couldn't understand me very well. I've worked with many teachers and a speech pathologist to reduce my accent. Some were helpful with grammar, others with pronunciation, but I never found a person who could help me with both until I met Emily. Her linguistic background and her speech pathology skills together have made a huge difference in my progress. She has designed a specialized program just for me that helps me to improve my grammar and reduce my accent at the same time. There are dozens of examples where this new approach has succeeded where others have failed. One I remember most is how I struggled with the word "have" for years. Many teachers tried to help me without improvement. Emily discovered that the problem was the way I was shaping my tongue for the vowel. Now people can finally understand me when I say this word. Some of the best things about working with Emily are how supportive she is and all of the constructive feedback she offers. The process is sometimes very frustrating for me, but she keeps me motivated to keep trying and gives me the tools I need to continue improving. She manages to make the sessions enjoyable. read more

I had struggled with the pronunciation of SH, CH, J, and S sounds since childhood. Friends and family always assured me that they couldn't hear anything wrong with my speech, but whenever I listened to recordings of my voice, I noticed that my attempts to produce these sounds came off as somewhat "slushy" or indistinct. After years of feeling self-conscious about this, I finally decided to meet with a specialist and found Emily. We discussed my concerns at our initial consultation, and she agreed that there were steps we could take to increase the clarity of my speech. We worked together both in person and later via Skype, and within roughly a dozen sessions, were able to resolve my issues. It has been a great relief to let go of this lifelong insecurity. I am now able to speak with confidence and (after twenty two years!) finally pronounce my own last name properly. Emily is an incredibly warm and genuine individual who seemed to take just as much excitement in my progress as I did. I will forever be grateful for Emily's help, and highly recommend that anyone similarly dissatisfied with their speech seek her out. My only regret is having waited so long before doing so myself. read more