Accent Elimination

My foreign-born parents, who have each lived in the United States for over forty years, both have distinctive but hard-to-place accents that I have never been able to imitate correctly (and have not inherited). Inspired by posters advertising courses in "accent elimination," I worked intensively with my parents and professional speech improvement coach Sam Chwat for several weeks in an attempt to “neutralize” my parents’ accents and then teach each of their accents to me. After each lesson my parents and I went back to my home studio in Brooklyn, New York, where we would practice and coach each other. Footage from the studio is shown on the front three monitors, while footage from our lessons is shown on the back.

-Nina Katchadourian