Brian Park moved from Seoul, South Korea to Auckland, New Zealand 2 years ago. A qualified engineer and relatively proficient in English, Brian thought it would be relatively easy to get a job as it was widely known and advertised that New Zealand had a shortage of qualified engineers.
However after more than 9 months of searching for a job, Brain became disillusioned. “I could not understand it,” he says. “My English is good and my experience was the same as the employers were looking for. In fact in Korea I had been exposed to working on even bigger projects than the local ones here.”
However when Brian came to SpeechSchool.TV and did his first assessment test, his spoken English was not as proficient as he first thought. “The assessment showed me that my spoken pronunciation in English could actually be quite hard to understand for the local speakers. This surprised me a lot as my written English has been shown to be very strong.”
Brian then realised that while is understanding of the English language was in fact very good his ability to pronounce it was not because most of his life he had been only using written English, not actually speaking it every day in an English speaking country.
The most important things are the “accent” and the local “lingo” Brian says. “Actually before I started SpeechSchool I couldn’t even say the word “pronunciation” correctly.”
He now thinks that despite his excellent qualifications and depth of experience, employers were concerned about his ability to converse with staff and clients and were therefore selecting local candidates over and above him, even if they were less qualified.
Brian says through using the English Accent program at SpeechSchool.TV he has now managed to soften his accent and speak English much more clearly. “I feel more confident now,” he says, “that I am just as good as the Kiwi candidates and can communicate in spoken English just as clearly.”