What are the most effective exercises for accent reduction in German

The most effective exercises for accent reduction in German focus on improving oral speech skills through targeted phonetic and pronunciation practice. Key approaches include:

1. Corpus-based pronunciation exercises: Using quantitative parameters to highlight deviations from standard German pronunciation, especially focusing on oral speech phenomena like reduction, elision, and clitic forms. Exercises based on authentic spoken German corpora help language learners practice real conversational speech features and improve accuracy. ¹

2. Audiovisual feedback systems: Exercises that provide learners with audiovisual cues and feedback on their pronunciation can help in correcting accent and improving clarity. Systems designed to offer immediate feedback on mispronunciations can train learners to adjust their accent more effectively. ²

3. Focused phonetic practice: Emphasizing difficult German sounds such as the vowel sounds [a] and [ɐ] (unstressed sounds in German), final consonants like /t/, syllable accents, and prosody. For example, practicing the production and perception of vowel reduction and final consonant clarity is essential for reducing accent. ^{3, 4, 5}

4. Listening and repetition training: Exposure to native German speech and the repetition of words or sentences with corrective feedback enhances accent adaptation. This includes training important discursive markers and sentence intonation. ^{6, 1}

In summary, effective accent reduction exercises in German combine corpus-based real speech patterns, audiovisual feedback, focused phonetic drills on vowels, consonants, and prosody, along with extensive listening and repetition practice. These techniques work together to help learners approximate native-like pronunciation and reduce foreign accent influence efficiently. ^{4, 1, 2, 3, 6}

References

• Formation of German oral speech skills among students of language universities based on corpus technologies

• Pronunciation Learning and Foreign Accent Reduction by an Audiovisual Feedback System

• Acoustic and articulatory manifestations of vowel reduction in German

• Do listeners recover “deleted” final /t/ in German?

• ‘Grandpa’ or ‘opera’? Production and perception of unstressed /a/ and /əʁ/ in German

• The Penefit of Salience: Salient Accented, but Not Unaccented Words Reveal Accent Adaptation Effects

• THE IMPACT OF UTILIZING COMPUTER ASSISTED LANGUAGE LEARNING ON EFL LEARNERS’ FOREIGN ACCENT REDUCTION

• WORKSHOP ON ACCENT REDUCTION AND VOICE QUALITY FOR TRAINEE INTERPRETERS

• Virtual body image exercises for people with obesity – results on eating behavior and body perception of the ViTraS pilot study

• “Writer’s Diary” for 1881 by Fyodor Dostoevsky in the German translations made at different times by Less Kaerrick

• The interaction of discourse markers and prosody in rhetorical questions in German

• Realisation of German final syllable /@n/ as a cue to accent authenticity for French accents in German

• The impact of preventive measures on the burden of femoral fractures – a modelling approach to estimating the impact of fall prevention exercises and oral bisphosphonate treatment for the years 2014 and 2025

• Phonetic accommodation in interaction with a virtual language learning tutor: A Wizard-of-Oz study

• Voice-preserving Zero-shot Multiple Accent Conversion

• Rhotics in Spanish as a foreign language: An intervention study with German-Turkish bilinguals

• The Penefit of Salience: Salient Accented, but Not Unaccented Words Reveal Accent Adaptation Effects

• Processing of unfamiliar accents in monolingual and bilingual children: effects of type and amount of accent experience

• Foreign English Accent Adjustment by Learning Phonetic Patterns

• The role of vowel length and glottalization in German learners’ perception of the English coda stop voicing contrast

• Do faces speak volumes? Social expectations in speech comprehension and evaluation across three age groups

• Homophonic Quotients of Linguistic Free Groups: German, Korean, and Turkish