1. Acknowledge that people sometimes have trouble understanding you. 2. Ask your friends to tell you which of the words you are saying are hard to understand. 3. Slow down when you speak – you might think that you sound too slow and stupid, you don’t. Only you will notice the difference in speed, the others will notice that they understand you better. 4. Speak your consonants in the middle of the words and at the end, it makes a big difference. 5. Don’t use slang as much as the people around you — slang tends to be slurred and spoken fast, you want to avoid that. 6. Practice what you’re going to say on the phone or to customers unitl you are good at what you are saying. Then you can concentrate on how you say it instead. 7. Keep up the work until your speech changes become habits and you don’t have to remember to pay attention to individual words. 8. Videotape yourself, once before you start working on your speech and then 2 months later– you will see a difference. 9. Record yourself on tape and have a friend tape a phone conversation; you should make adjustments to your way of speaking. Exaggerate speaking s-l-o-w-l-y and distinctly. 10. Relax, these things take time. Look around you. Most people around you have accents and they probably don’t bother you much, so your accent doesn’t bother them that much either.