Workshops

Optima Communications hosts regular workshops

Workshops

Corporate & Educational

Optima Communications facilitates workshops for:

  • Professionals who want to improve their communication skills
  • Speech language pathologists and ESL instructors working in the area of accent modification/pronunciation

Intensive Communication Improvement Workshops

Intensive Communication Improvement Workshops

Communicate Effectively
Optima Communications offers a variety of one day workshops on-site in your workplace. These workshops are designed to enhance communication skills.
  1. Empowered Communication- Effective Listening and Speaking- for all employees
  2. Canadian English Pronunciation Training (Accent Modification)- for ESL employees
  3. Canadian Workplace Culture and Communication- for ESL employees

Additional workshops can be customized to the topic of your choice. Contact info@optimacomm.com for a free corporate consultation.

Improving your communication skills is a great investment

ACE™ “Train the Trainer” Accent Modification Workshop

Optima - Intensive Communication Improvement Workshops

ACE™ “Train the Trainer” Accent Modification Workshop

Assess & Train Effectively

This workshop is exclusively designed for speech-language pathologists and ESL instructors. Learn to accurately evaluate English pronunciation and provide an effective accent modification/accent reduction program. Learn a functional and proven effective method to assist your clients or students in becoming more clearly understood and confident speaking English.

You can book the 2-day intensive ACE™ “Train the Trainer” Workshop for your organization and employees. We conveniently come on-site to facilitate the workshop for your staff. This highly effective workshop is available in Canada and internationally for staff development. Watch for the ACE ™ “Train the Trainer” Workshop coming soon in a virtual format!

Sign up to our mailing list for up to date workshop information.

“Train the Trainer” Workshop Components Include:

  • ACE pronunciation assessment (administration, scoring and goal setting)
  • Variables affecting pronunciation
  • Language specific pronunciation differences
  • Segmentals- Features of English speech sounds
  • International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in assessment and training
  • Sound elicitation
  • Suprasegmentals- stress and “unstress” patterns
  • Common stress and intonation patterns
  • Canadian patterns (e.g. Canadian Raising) for Canadian audiences
  • ACE Training sequence and steps to success
  • Set up and implement an effective accent modification program

Watch for virtual ACE Train the Trainer Workshops coming soon! Sign up to our mailing list for more information.

Testimonials

“Lisa’s workshop equipped me with a variety of wonderful effective tools to teach pronunciation to ESL students. Lisa’s presentation skills are exemplary and she effortlessly kept all participants engaged in this extremely informative and interactive workshop. I know that both Lisa’s materials and the collaborative workshop exercises will serve me well throughout my teaching career.”

Myrna Glenn
ESL Instructor | Continuing Education
Red Deer College

“I really really enjoyed the course. Your energy and great sense of humour made the complex material much easier to process. I am in awe of how well the assessment and your book deal with all the areas needing to be addressed. The layout is very logical, well laid out and very functional to use. I am looking forward to trying it with some clients.”

Adele McKernan
Speech Language Pathologist

“I was really pleased with the information that Lisa taught in her 2 day course for SLP’s and ESL teachers. I have been a speech language pathologist for many years and I felt her approach to accent modification was one of the most comprehensive I have seen. In particular she deals with much more than just pronunciation differences. She addresses the other very important aspects of speaking English as a second language, including word and sentence stress, colloquialisms and phrases specific to Canadian English. Lisa’s materials are easy to read and follow for the clients and provide the clinician with a great starting point for the sessions. I highly recommend this program to speech language pathologists working in the area of accent modification.”

Connie Zalmanowitz
Speech-Language Pathologist

“Lisa, thank you for the ‘Train the Trainer’ workshop. Both experienced and novice instructors benefitted from your experience and knowledge! The session reinforced pronunciation techniques that our instructors already use, and it also provided new ideas and strategies to be implemented in the classroom to help students increase their comprehensibility. You highlighted specific areas to focus on so that students could see the most progress each term they are with us. You presented with lots energy and enthusiasm, which was appreciated by everyone! The workshop materials are very clear and easy to use. They will be beneficial in conducting assessments and focusing on specific challenging pronunciation points with students. The workshop was very informative, especially the piece on Canadian pronunciation!”

Tracey Giesbrecht
Program Director, English Language Centre
University of Manitoba