Your Voice - Your Choice - Your Impact
Private Individual Speech Coaching
for International Professionals
by Christi Barb, PhD
"I want to speak in a way
that makes a more professional impact,
but I don't know what to do differently."
"People understand me easily and I rarely have to repeat what I say, but I know I can do better. I don't know where to start"
"I have fallen into a habit of speaking with this accent and don't know how to speak any other way."
"I think my accent creates a feeling of distance or even becomes a barrier when trying to communicate,
but I don't know how I sound to others."
About Adastra Speech & Christi Barb, PhD
Your speech represents more than just the message you are conveying. It represents your life history and your perception of your identity. Making changes to something that powerful can be intimidating and it takes courage and an open mind to try new ways of presenting yourself to the world.
My goal for everyone I work with is to teach them to do what I do by hearing what I hear, and analyzing what I analyze, until they can do this for themselves and don't need me anymore.
It's an odd thing to have a goal of making myself obsolete, but it's very rewarding to see people have more options in their lives by gaining control of how they speak.
Awareness - Control - Analysis
Before you can build new speech habits, you need to understand your current habits.
This is what American English speech coaching can do for you:
Increase your awareness of what is making the most impact on listener understanding.
Increase your control of your speech to make the changes you want.
Teach you how to analyze your speech and make new speech habits.
Communication is Connection
Communication is relationship building.
Communicating well in a language that you learned after your first language can be particularly challenging. Sometimes it can even feel like there is a distance between you and the listener, especially when there are misunderstandings due to speech.
Accent Modification includes many different aspects of making changes to spoken communication, but ultimately, it's about making changes to reduce the feeling of distance between two people and facilitating connection.
My approach to accent modification includes the cognitive aspects of learning and memory, placing thinking as the first step of speaking in order to make connections.
Christi Barb, PhD
While you’ve been honing your skills in your scientific field, I have been doing the same in speech science. I am a trained observer, analyst, and strategist of American English speaking skills.
I can teach you to do what I do.
The goal is to make you self-sufficient so you can apply your analytical skills to your own communication. You'll gain awareness and options of how to convey your message, express your thoughts, and how you are perceived.
Excellence should be Dr. Christi Barb's last name! I had the honor to work for more than one year with Christi and the experience was exceptional. Very professional and organized, Christi delivers effective results. I strongly recommend Dr. Christi Barb services.
Carlos - Sr. Automation Engineer, Shire, Language: Spanish
I just have great comments to qualify Christi’s guidance about helping foreign English learners how to improve our pronunciation 👌! I have joined her dynamic meetings, and since the first event I felt so supported because she teaches us how to sound natural when speaking English, how to link words to have a good connected speech, always with patience, and a smile. Her charisma lets us to ask her any doubt about confusing sounds! I appreciate so much her professionalism. Thanks a lot Christi.
Teresa Avalos, Language: Spanish
Her 10+ years academic training (including her PhD) makes her training method very scientific and systematic. This fits me who has a strong science and engineering background, because I would love to understand the why, how and mechanics, even on pronunciation. With her training, pronunciation is not a black box that you cannot master unless you were born in the US, but rather is a step-by-step science that we can crack the code and master as an educated adult.
Jing - Senior Finance Manager from a Fortune 100 company, FTSE 100, Language: Mandarin
I had been coached on my English with Dr. Christi Barb who has expertise and many year teaching experience in English speaking training. Thanks to her, my English accent has been dramatically improved, and now I have almost no problem with my accent and intonation at work, which is an international research group in a European university.
Wonsup - Post-Doctoral student in Engineering, Delft, Netherlands, Language: Korean
