In Their Own Words
Former clients have left reviews about their experience working with me. I work with the most amazing people!
Dr. Christi Barb
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Q: Why aren't there pictures and names of people and companies?
A: Confidentiality I have been very fortunate to work with the most amazing people who apply their motivation, dedication, and skills that make them successful in other areas of their lives to their own speech. I have helped guide them, but the credit is all theirs due to their own hard work. I am grateful for and honored by their kind words that they have shared on LinkedIn, Yelp, Google+, and with me personally. |
The lessons from Christi is one of the best investments I have. As an MBA student with strong accent, it’s difficult to look for a good job in the business area. I had worked with my language partners, sought suggestions from the career coaches in the business school, and even imitated the accents from news reporters. Until I met Christi, I didn’t find the reason of the little progress in my accent is not inadequate practice but incorrect directions. I didn’t know where my weakness was! Christi showed me why my accent was not like native speakers’, how I should practice, and what the goal I should set up. At the end, I found a great job I like although it requires a lot of communication with English speakers. Christi is an exceptional and fun teacher, and Americans now frequently think I'm American, something I thought was impossible to achieve. Christi also unleashed my interest in linguistics and accents, which has proven to be useful in English and other languages too. Christi helped me improve my accent right in the initial consultation. She listened to me speak, identified the biggest differences between my pronunciation and the standard American speech pattern, and was the first person to clearly explain to me how to pronounce certain sounds correctly (for instance, the difference between pronouncing "can" and "can't", between "eat" and "it", and how to make my voiced "th" sound less like a "d"). I've listened to accent courses before, but I've never really understood how exactly to position my jaw and my tongue to voice these distinctions, until Christi explained them to me. Christi even sent me notes from our meeting, accompanied by a videotaped explanation. Working with Dr. Christi Barb has been one of the most transformative professional and personal development experiences of my life. I learned to speak English without much formal training and at times my accent got in the way of clear communication. Two years ago, I reached out to Dr. Barb looking to improve my English-speaking skills. She helped me understand what parts of my pronunciation made my speech sound Spanish-accented and taught me how to modify it so it could sound more American. Thanks to her holistic approach, I developed a more professional speech and improved my public speaking skills significantly. I wholeheartedly recommend her services. She is not only an expert at the subject matter, but she is also a wonderful person to work with. Christi is a pleasure to work with. She's very friendly, patient and resourceful. Having Christi as a coach definitely made me achieve better results, faster. Highly recommended for those of us who speak English as a second language and want to communicate better. I had been struggling with my poor english accents for years before taking christi's classes. I haven't got any english accent training and have a bad habit of pronunciation. Christi's course is very systematic. I took five classes and felt lots of improvements. I start to aware of my errors and learn to control my tongue. After the first class, my friend noticed my self-correction. It is very good feeling to know how to speak clearly and confidentally. I had the opportunity to work with Dr Barb in the area of accent modification. In a short period of time she helped me understand better what accent really means and helped me improve my accent, my pronunciation skills and my English speaking skills in general. Thanks to her coaching, I was able to express myself perfectly in English both professionally and casually. She is really passionate and dedicated to support her student. She is really creative with the capacity to properly assess what you need to improve and to design a program that fits your need. I highly recommend Dr Barb as a personal coach for accent modification and as an instructor for English-language learners. Christi is a very motivated and professional person, she helped me a lot with the language and pronunciation during the period I spent in Boston. She is highly prepared and really enthusiastic about her work. Further she was truly kind and always available to help me with any kind of doubts. It was a pleasure to work with her. 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. Dr. Barb is the most professional and talented professor I have ever met in my entire life. Her class is always very casual and relaxing, but gotta say I learned tons of useful and practical Slangs for daily uses. Now I know where should I put my tongue to pronounce correctly and how to connect words to be sounds naturally! Much easier to fit in than before! haha, like her a lot:) like her a lot, huge fan of hers! Enjoying! Dr. Christi helped me improve my accent and interview skills for the last two months. Before starting the class, she used her innovative technology to test my speech from the aspects of pronunciation, pitch, stress, etc. The test results helped me quickly realize my shortcomings and I began to correct my speech purposefully. The most impressive thing is that she also gave me a lot of professional advice to improve my interview answers in regards to my major. I feel more confident in self-organizing and communication skills. I will absolutely recommend her classes to anyone who is looking forward to having a better performance in job interview. I took the Accent Modification Program in NU Speech center for a semester. Although I had participated some free accent modification sessions before, which were very instructive, Prof. Barb still evaluated my spoken English and made a personalized and flexible plan. Since accent modification is a long-term effort, my accent did not become nativized right after finishing the program. Christi invented several easily approached methods. So even I stopped taking her course, I can modify my accent in daily conversation in the future. Again, accent modification is a long-term effort, but Christi can save you tons of time. Christi is very professional. She knows exactly what I need to improve and how to improve it. I've learned a lot from her in just a few months. She's the best speech coach I've ever had. I totally recommend her to anyone who wants to improve English speaking skills. |
Christi is the best accent coach that I have worked with. Two things make her unique from the others. Working with Christi on accent reduction was the best thing I did for myself last year and I highly recommend her to anyone who's looking to speak "American" English better! After a lot of research, I chose Christi because of her extensive training and experience in the field of accent pathology and the opportunity for me to work with her 1:1 through a series of lessons. Christi customizes each of our lessons focusing on my key trouble spots and she helped me practice in between lessons by providing feedback to recordings that I send her. I was impressed by how quickly I was able to hear the difference once I started working with her. I now feel more confident in my speaking and wished that I had started working with her earlier. Christi is a highly experienced speech expert. She's very good at identifying areas that need work and tackling them. She creates a very thorough plan to walk you through a progression that makes sense. I highly recommend working with her to anybody who wants to improve their presentation and delivery skills. Also, she's incredibly nice and it's always a fun experience to work with her. If you're on the fence just give the first class a try. You'll be back! Dr. Barb is an expert in field of accent modification. She has wide experience to work with clients with different ethnic backgrounds. Dr. Barb always thinks ‘outside the box’ to develop an individualized plan for her clients. Her backgrounds in English and linguistic not only improved my accent but also my language skills. I highly recommended Dr. Barb to be your personal coach for accent modification. As a young foreign professional I face speaking and accent challenges in my working environment. Christi helped me to increase my speaking skills dramatically and to improve my English pronunciation and intonation a lot. She is especially experienced at analyzing my accent shortcomings and gave me advice on how to improve it. She is detail-oriented, student-oriented, and experienced. I highly recommend Christi to everyone who is looking for perfecting his or her speaking and American accent. I learned so much from her when I went to a college in the U.S. At the time, I had no confidence with my speaking, and I didn't know how I could make it better. She always explained simply why my accent sounded different from native English speakers and how I could make it more fluent. Depending on your purpose or situation to use English, she proposes you different materials, and you can focus on what you would like to improve. Christi is an awesome and professional American accent teacher. My company has some educational fund for employees so my manager suggested me to use it for speech training. I was fortunate to find Christi. Initially, I chose her program because of the location (Central Square) and time (after work hours). She has very dedicated teaching methodology which helps me improve my spoken English a lot, especially in public speaking skills, awareness of mistakes, key features of English (intonation, emphasis of key words, pronunciation of specific sounds), most important of all, the methodology she taught me for continuous practice. And also, she has good personality and is easy to work with. I sincerely recommend Christi and her American speech coaching program. Dr. Christi Barb is my best accent modification coach I've ever met in my life. I deeply appreciate her teaching English and mentoring for my professional career. I would like to keep in touch with her to improve my English. Thanks. 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 have been dramatically improved, and now I have almost no problem with my accent and intonation at work, which is an international research group in one of European university. I highly recommend Dr.Barb. When I was looking for a job, she helped me to improve my speaking and interview skills last month. She is very knowledgeable about teaching foreign speakers to speak English more professionally and confidently. I can tell that she has lots of experience working with international students, because when I worked with her, she figured out my language issues very quickly and suggested me with many great solutions. By working with her to prepare for the interviews, I got 3 job offers. This is so awesome to me! If you are a non-native English speaker and thinking about improve your English speaking, Dr.Barb is the right expert for you. I took five classes from Christi while I was in Boston. Her classes were very well structured and allowed me to systematically understand how accent and speaking work, which is greatly helpful. She also answered and corrected some deep-rooted questions and bad speaking habits that have been bothering me for a long time. |
I had individual sessions with her for two and half months (Dec 2015-Feb 2016). I wanted to improve my accents and speech style for upcoming job interviews. Starting from diagnostic on my speech style, we had individual sessions based on her diagnostic and my goal.
I knew some of the issues in my speech style. And I was able to improve these issues based on self-teaching and trial-and-error. However, it was time-consuming, and I wasn't sure whether I was heading in the right direction.
She was very precise pointing out the problems that I had for many years in casual conversation and public speech. Her diagnosis, based on her speech pathology study, was very meticulous and was connected to the better solutions than I had.
All the individual sessions were customized to tackle these issues one by one. Every class had the primary objective, derived from the diagnosis. Her materials focused on the topic that I needed most. She repeated the point until I truly understood. We did not waste time on something I am already good at. There was homework, and she gave me very helpful feedback.
Within a couple of sessions, people around me started to notice some positive changes. When I compared the recordings of my voice before and after the sessions, I could clearly hear the changes she made. Now I feel much confident that before.
After we had finished all sessions, she gave me a direction to improve my speech style based on the things I learned from the class. She was very generous with sharing all the important secrets / resources during and after the class. She not only gave me valuable feedback on my speech but also taught me how to improve myself. I think this is important because I should be on my own anyway.
I strongly recommend her. My speech is definitely improved, and I learned how to improve my speech. Grab her when she is available.
--Haewon Y., Brighton, MA (Yelp Review), Language: Korean
Christi excels as an instructor for English-language learners, and the proof is in the skills and confidence her students gain. Using her research and expertise, innovative technology, and a clear passion for the field, she guides students to correct pronunciation, accent modification, and truly progress as professional and academic English speakers. The students I referred to her always returned with new abilities and wanted to refer their friends. |
Christi is one of the best teachers I have ever seen in the area of accent modification. She had helped my students improve their English skills in speaking for two years on skype and they all found her superb in knowledge as well as pedagogy of effective teaching of English to foreigners. I highly recommend her as an excellent teacher to anyone who wants to reduce accents in English speaking. |