Some sounds spoken in the American English language are not very clear for other language speakers. For example, for some Latin language speakers, usually words such as "bad / bed" and "sheep/ ship" sound literally the same. As a Latin language speaker myself, one can imagine the kind of misunderstanding some conversations I had would cause, right? I had tried taking classes with several teachers before finding Sheila, and none were able to help me understand the difference of these sounds, much less teach me how to repeat and imitate these sounds myself. Then, I finally met Sheila. Sheila was able to help me recognize the differences of many english sounds which I didn't know how to tell one from the other, and she also helped me recognize sounds/words I was mispronouncing without even knowing it. She also helped me repeat these sounds myself, and it amazes me how her knowledge is so broad when it comes to english in all aspects! During our classes, she would explain to me the positioning of the lips and the tongue, the opening of the mouth and where I should "feel" the sound coming from when saying vowels and consonants sounds out loud. She knows a level of detail about pronunciation that I didn't even know existed, and even though it took a while for my ears to get trained and recognize these different sounds, I can see my accent is getting more natural (and smooth!) by the day with our classes! What's also incredible about Sheila is that, additionally, she has so much English knowledge that goes way beyond pronunciation. She has been teaching me and my husband some advanced grammar rules that sometimes we'd overlook and make mistakes. She has also been helping us with our "flow" when speaking and reading, showing us how English speakers add rhythm to the phrases, which words to emphasize, how to pronounce some words we were mispronouncing, amongst so many other things! And to keep the classes interesting, we have even read books together, and discussed not only the grammar and vocabulary of those books, but also some deeper literature topics and discussed the interpretation of what we had just read! She has deep knowledge of the English language in so many different aspects that I get amazed and surprised at every new topic she finds for us to cover in our classes. I have been taking classes for a few years now, and I know I still have a long way to go before losing my accent and sounding more like a native speaker, but I can also see how far I have gotten since I started taking these classes. As one of the most knowledgeable teachers I've seen, I definitely recommend her classes to any level of English speaker! read more

It's worth for the class! I took 10 classes with Sheila , she is very experienced, she knew what's your weakness, and left homework to practice, next class will review your homework and recording, and she is responsible teacher,you will improve fast if you follow her instruction, some Americans said my accent is good, take her class, you will not regret. . read more

Smooth English - Language Schools Near Me

I am an Physicist and work in the film industry as well. I have been taking accent classes with Sheila for two years. Get rid of the Asian accent is a marathon. We have been working primarily on my American accent I have dramatic changes in regards of perfect and clear communication When I present the power point presentation the Clients. We hold our meetings on FaceTime and Sheila does recordings of audio for me, which means I can listen to the recordings to work on my accent while I am on the move. Then whenever I need further reinforcement to see the stress on the words, I can refer to the materials which Sheila has highlighted in Google Docs. I am getting fantastic praise from directors who keep telling me to continue doing whatever it is we are doing in the sessions to get such awesome results. Thank you so much Sheila for doing such an incredible job! read more

I have had more than 10 classes with Sheila on pronunciation/accent reduction. Sheila is very responsible, professional and patient. She always takes snapshots of our Zoom classes with her detailed notes and send them to me after classes. She also sends me homework that is designed specifically for me after each class. I can tell that my pronunciation has improved a lot since I had classes with her and will highly recommend Sheila for anyone who is looking to improve their English. read more

I called Sheila to help me edit my book, and she provided an extraordinary service! Not only did she improve the flow of my content correcting grammar and text structure, but she also was very responsive to my last minute request. She'll definitely be my go-to person for all my future publications! read more

I have been studying English with Shelia for about a year and a half. She is super AMAZING!!! First, she teaches me the skills to make the correct pronunciations, like the position and movement of the tough, lips. Those are very important, at least to me. Because sometimes I, as a non-native speaker, cannot tell the differences between my pronunciation and the correct one just by listening. Second, she can catch very subtle differences and correct me. That's super helpful to reduce bad speaking habits. Last, she is very patience! I still remember I could not say "for an interview" right in a sentence when I started my lessons with her. She then made a recording only for this short sentence for me, syllable by syllable. I appreciate that!! Shelia, I think you already know who I am after reading my comments, even though I use a unusual username, LOl. read more

Sheila is very professional, honest and generous. Before I took my private lessons with her, I watched hundreds of pronunciation videos on YouTube for a year, and I found it had big limitation on reducing accent (I prefer to say correcting wrong ways to pronounce English sounds, because accent is different from wrong pronunciation, accent is more like different dialects, like British accent, Canadian accent, Australian accent or New Zealand accent.) I'm impressed the most by her coaching is that she can identify the even most subtle mistakes that I made and correct my tongue movement. I think that's very critical to say English sounds correctly. That's not something you can learn by hearing if you are not a child anymore. The coach's most important role is to provide feedback and point out areas for improvement. That's not a regular American husband or friend can do. If you want to 1. speaking all the English sounds correctly, 2. improve your professionalism at workplace, 4. understand why Americans speak in a certain way, 5. simply want to impress your friends ... I can't recommend Shiela more than enough!!! read more

I started taking classes with Sheila shortly after arriving in the US. After studying with her for a year and a half my accent became so much improved that some people didn't even notice that I'm foreign born! All of the lessons were always fun; and, she would always tailor the content specific to my individual needs. The recordings that she sent after each lesson also made a tremendous impact on my progress. I can say with 100% confidence that Sheila is the best accent reduction tutor in the Bay Area (she is a real professional who truly loves what she does)! read more

I have been taking accent reduction and grammar lessons with Sheila for over a year. Sheila is a fantastic teacher. She has a methodical teaching curriculum and techniques to lead me through the lessons. She is very knowledgeable about English grammar and pronunciation rules and is able to apply the knowledge in our lessons. She is patient, professional, and always on time. We have had lessons in person and on skype. Because meeting on Skype is more convenient, we did most of our lessons using skype. Sheila has been doing an exceptional job in teaching me the lessons. I highly recommend her. read more

I have been taking her class for one and half years. Her class covers pronunciation, intonation and gramma. Comparing to other English class, I really like her class due to interaction based on her ability to find my bad habits that I am unaware of. With other class, I was not able to improve my ability to speak or accent but with her class, I was able to fix my pronunciation problem, especially R pronunciation. If anybody is looking for someone to improve his/her English ability, Sheila is a perfect person. read more

English is my second language. My reading comprehension is good, but speaking with some accent. My problem lays with incorrect vowel pronunciations. Ever since I use Sheila's IOS apps, my pronunciation has improved a lot. Usually I just repeat after her until I get it right then move on to another word. I especially like the "What is everyone talking about". At the beginning, I got many wrong because I couldn't differentiate vowels from one another, now that I have used the apps for a while, I found myself sometimes get them all correct. I highly recommend this apps. Enjoy it. It's only a couple of dollars and the benefit is unmeasurable. read more

I 've been taking 6 courses with Sheila covering vocabulary, gramma and pronunciation, which are pretty helpful to me. She prepares a lot before each class and gives one-to-one feedbacks. Each class follows with some homework to review and practice. Unfortunately, due to my work change, I can't continue the program but will consider to get back if possible. read more

I took 10 lessons for pronunciation/accent reduction with Sheila. It's very helpful. Sheila is a great and enthusiastic teacher. She is always well prepared for the class and send you homework/recordings after class for your practice at home. I had face-to-face lessons at her place in Los Gatos, and I really enjoyed her teaching techniques. She shows you how to pronounce the word correctly with the tongue/lip position and tips/tricks to help you improve your pronunciation. It helped me a lot. If you are looking for classes on pronunciation/accent reduction, I highly recommend her. read more

I signed up for testing and 20 hours of accent reduction training. I felt like maybe I could communicate better as an engineer at work. The testing was quick. It took me just 10 minutes to record my voice reading some words and answering some prompts. Then just 1 day later, I received a report. It detailed all my errors on the test and organized them according to how we would cover them in our lessons. During lessons, we went down the list and checked off the errors. I had homework after each lesson. It usually involved practicing words and sentences related to a pronunciation or grammar topic. Recordings were included so I could listen to the instructor's correct pronunciation at the same time. Then at the next lesson, we always checked my progress on the homework. She corrected me and noted repeating errors. If there were repeating errors, she assigned me new homework about that topic until the errors were minimized. It was easy working with her. I also liked telling stories based on pictures and she corrected my pronunciation as I went through story. read more

We asked Sheila whether she would be willing to provide intensive 1-on-1 tutoring to a young French family member, Senior in high school, in need of urgent remedial English, during a 10 days visit to the States, and Sheila gladly made herself available as much as possible. She was able to keep the student in question interested and motivated during 3h sessions, adapt to her level, select adequate materials, adapt her content and vocabulary to the student's other activities (tourism, meetings with other American people) and select useful homework to capitalize on the work done 1-on-1 and help the student solidify her grammatical knowledge. The student demonstrated significant progress between her initial evaluation test and the final test administered by Sheila. Based on how well this went and how interested and motivated the student was, we decided to continue with video skype lessons from France. We have enjoyed immensely Sheila's energy, knowledge and ability to make her English classes fun and engaging, as well as her professionalism. read more

I have been taking Sheila's private classes for a while now. First, I benefited from learning and practicing pronunciation of the English vowels. I realized what vowels were of a particular difficulty for me. I am sure it would not have been possible to diagnose without a teacher's help. Second, I have learned about linking words and intonation, which was also very important. Now, I'm practicing speaking and correcting my 'old' mistakes and learning grammar. Sheila is very competent, and can easily adapt to my needs. I highly recommend Smooth English to anyone who wants to improve his/her accent and other areas of English language. read more

I am very grateful that I could find out this excellent English teacher. She is capable to detect weak points and knows how to correct them with sure method. That is a rare thing. read more

My foreign accent story is similar to millions of other immigrants': studied English in non-English speaking country, came to the USA around 6 years ago, when I was 20+ and had decent level of English for professional and informal communication. Everything seemed to go well, except for a couple of moments, when random people would ask me where I was visiting from, and would get surprised when I told them that I had lived in the country for the past 6 years. The more it happened, the worse I felt about my English pronunciation and my heavy accent. It reached the boiling point when a shop assistant at the mall told me that for someone who had lived in the US for a long time I had very heavy accent. So I decided that it was time to work on my pronunciation and I did some research on different options for "Accent Reduction". Out of all other options I picked Smooth English due its location, great reviews and a couple of videos on YouTube where I could hear the instructor's speech. Initial test confirmed all of my concerns regarding pronunciation -- I made a lot of mistakes and a couple of words I pronounced so wrong that I could not even understand myself after I had listened to the recording. Now it has been over 15 lessons and at this point I can say for sure that I am really happy about selecting Smooth English to help me with my pronunciation. We started from the basics: consonants and vowels and gradually worked though all aspects of speech elements. What I really liked is that the program is tailored for you based on the results of your initial test. You work though problematic areas which are specific to only you and not anyone else. Expect every lesson to challenge you, there will not be lessons where you feel bored, there is always something new to learn and practice. And remember, your accent will not get fixed by itself. Only your hard work and dedication together with good support from your teacher will help to reduce your foreign accent. read more

Sheila has helped me tremendously with my accent reduction. I've lived here for 20 years and didn't even know I was pronouncing many sounds incorrectly. My boss thought I needed some accent reduction if I wanted to move up in my company. I didn't think my English was so bad, but now after learning from Sheila, I realize how so many things I was doing were not right. It must have made it difficult for others to understand me. My prior English learning experience was simply listen and imitate. I couldn't take anything home from my lessons with me that I could remember and apply later. But Sheila has an organized system for learning how all the sounds are produced differently. If she went to China, she'd be enormously successful! I'm also learning which words to stress in a sentence, when to change my pitch and how to use intonation to get my point across. She divides the class into exercises for specific sounds, and how to achieve the right rhythm in sentences and even has me give speeches related to my work, that we analyze and correct together. So my 90 minute session flies by and is never tedious. She has a sense of humor and I feel comfortable to make mistakes with her and know she will always encourage and correct me. read more