corporate cultural bias and unintentional or conscious individual bias.”
Strong accents, my Latino clients say, often hold them back from promotions, affect their confidence and credibility. Half the problem, I say, is not only their accents, but their audience's ears. Outside of Miami, (where it's much easier to speak with an accent and be understood) people are not accustomed to accents, and they are not good at understanding. They are often impatient, judgmental and worse... rude.
American English. To them, an accent sounds retarded, mangled, dumb. And this is sad. They don't know what it's like to communicate in a second language. And they are impatient.
It's also true that only three out of 100 Americans articulate properly. For this reason, people who speak English as a second language often pick up the sloppiest, dirtiest and nastiest speech habits from Americans who speak poorly around them. Mixed with an accent, it sounds like dirty 'street-talk' speech, the worst of the worst of American English.
I don't care what anyone says, I say you can change your accent and your way of speaking in eight weeks. My clients can all vouch for that. Eight weeks. Sixteen hours. Something happens in the third week: they begin to feel frustrated because they are now catching all their mistakes. I say, "CELEBRATE that feeling of frustration because it shows that you are making progress, and for the first time, your brain is recognizing your speech patterns. It wants to change! Then, they begin to correct themselves the instant they hear their mistakes, and one by one each mistake disappears.