High immigration rates in the U.S. have forced all of us to listen to our neighbors with a more discerning ear, as most residents (of urban areas, at least) interact with people from various national origins dozens of times daily.  For the most part, language slips and accent woes are rather insignificant, simply giving us amusing anecdotes for later.  While some people may get annoyed, not clearly understanding the 7-11 clerk is hardly life-threatening, and usually the irritation comes more from a bad day in general than any real inconvenience resulting from miscommunication.  However, one might reasonably wonder about other, much more critical professions, such as the health care profession.  Here, language clarity can literally be life or death.  The difference between 15cc and 50 cc of a life-saving drug, for instance, is a disaster waiting to happen.  With the influx of foreign health care providers, and the high levels of international recruitment in university medical programs, what can be done to ensure that accents don’t end up harming patients?

Answer: Accent reduction training…

The increasing need to teach foreign doctors to speak with less of an accent is driving Ms. Yates’ 2-year-old Dallas-based business, G.E.T. English Training, to yearly revenue in excess of $100,000. Her accent reduction course costs $113 an hour, or $1,465 for hourlong sessions spanning 13 weeks.

Ms. Yates, who has a master’s degree in linguistics and previously taught English in Mexico, takes a 45-minute taped speech sample during the student’s free first session. Later, her staff will listen to it, over and over, for more than three hours, picking up speech patterns and rhythm.

A good idea, and it’s likely that these businesses will start to become common, serving certain fields.  I doubt it would ever catch on in general immigrant communities, for, as mentioned above, many immigrants can live and work just fine with heavy accents (or even limited English conversational ability).  My wife speaks English with a heavy accent, and while that has restricted her employment options in some ways (e.g., she wouldn’t want to work in telephone sales, for instance), she still has a great job with the local school district, and I can’t imagine her ever feeling the need to cough up thousands of dollars for accent training (although, let’s face it… I could probably do it for free)…  This sort of intensive training would serve a limited professional band, but would accomplish terribly important work…