The Philosophy Behind The Speech Habit
Speech improvement is not a destination, it is a practice.
After years of working with clients, Dr. Barb observed that people needed more than lessons. They needed to keep practicing even when the initial motivation wore off. The answer was was to develop the habit of practicing English speaking skills.
Research on habit formation points to the same principles: small changes are more powerful than big leaps, and repetition creates neurological change. Every time you return to a speech feature, even briefly, you strengthen the connections that make that pattern easier to produce.
You do not need a long session. You need consistency.
As Will Durant wrote, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."
Practice Your Way
The minimum commitment is one email a week. Five minutes. No login required. That is it. Everything else is optional and available whenever you want more.
Level 1 - Activate Awareness Each week you receive a focused mini-lesson by email with audio examples embedded directly in the message. Open it, listen, practice. Just reading and listening is enough to reactivate the neural pathways for that speech feature and keep your awareness sharp all week.
Level 2 - Gain Control When you want feedback, with a full membership you can record yourself practicing and send it to Dr. Barb. She sends back a video reply with specific feedback on what she hears. No scheduling required. Do it when it fits your week.
Level 3 - Achieve Analysis More and more practice helps create a feedback loop which helps you monitor your own speech so you can hear how you sound, notice mistakes, and know how to make changes.
Use the optional weekly group session on Zoom. One hour with Dr. Barb and other members. Ask questions, practice out loud, hear how others work through the same patterns.
One-to-one coaching sessions (60 minutes) with Dr. Barb are also available to members. One free session per month.
Practice On My Own
The Speech Habit -- Email Practice $20/month
This is a weekly email mini-lesson, delivered to your inbox.
It is a focused practice with audio examples, one speech feature at a time (see the five speech features in the section below). A very simple foundational habit that keeps your skills sharp.
Your weekly goal arrives in your in-box.
- One speech feature
- Three short practice exercises
- Audio examples of each exercise
- Open it, listen, practice
- Five minutes is enough to keep your awareness high.
- Listen for and practice that specific speech feature all week.
- No login required and no schedule to keep
Practice With Feedback and Coaching
The Speech Habit -- Full Membership $100/month
This includes everything in Email Practice, plus many interactive options.
You choose to participate as much or as little as you want.
- All weekly email mini-lessons
- One (60-minute) coaching session per month
- Video feedback for your practice audio recordings
- Optional weekly live group sessions on Zoom
- Access to all paid online materials such as "30 Days of Prosody"
- Access to the member community for Q&A and resources
The Cycle: 5 Speech Features
The Speech Habit is built around five core features of American English. Your weekly emails cycle through all five, returning to each one at increasing levels of difficulty. You never repeat the same examples or exercises, but the features you practice will always be the same five, because real fluency is built by returning to fundamentals, not by moving on from them.
1. Intonation - Practice the change in pitch to emphasize important words in phrases and sentences.
2. Word Stress - Practice emphasizing the stressed syllable with higher pitch and longer vowel duration.
3. Pronunciation of Vowels - Practice words that contain the featured vowels of the week.
4. Pronunciation of Consonants - Practice words that contain the featured consonants of the week.
5. Listening and Imitation - Listen for all features in an audio of a sentence. Notice which words are emphasized, how words are stressed, how sounds are pronounced. Imitate the sentences the way you heard them.
Assessment/Review - Apply your skills from each of the the five topics you have practiced to short practice exercises. The answers are provided so you can self-check your answers.
Repeat - After we've covered all five features and the assessment/review, the cycle starts again, and each time we return to a feature, we go deeper. Real progress is made in small, consistent steps, returning to the same fundamentals at increasing levels of refinement.
Coaching Session with Dr. Barb
Included in the Full Membership
Members will receive a private scheduling link to book one 60-minute one-to-one coaching (on Zoom) per month.
Live Practice Sessions on Zoom
You can ask questions about and practice any speech feature you want in the live group sessions.
There are two group practice sessions a week to try to accommodate members across different time zones. Join in one that fits your schedule or both!
All times US Eastern:
- Monday 6:00 -- 7:00pm
- Wednesdays 12:00 -- 1:00pm