A core component of the English Accent and Pronunciation Improvement Course is the weekly embodied oral reading. Each week students are trained in a "Movement, tone, tempo and. touch technique" (MT4) that is then practiced in the oral reading in various ways. Part of the process is the student applying the MT4 to a ~300 word text. The personalized text will be generated by AI (I use Perplexity currently, but any Chat-GPT arrived at a similar "solution.") Here is a simple example. (The basic prompt, fill-in-the-blank format is provided for students each week. In this case, the career discipline or context area, accounting, and the proficiency level and L1 of students are filled in.)
- Generate a word list that includes 20 technical terms used in accounting that can be difficult to pronounce for advanced adult learners of English whose native language is Korean. Include the phonetic transcription of each along with the word, itself.
- Create an engaging, 300 word story with as much dialogue as possible, using those 20 words, where the basic theme is where an accountant is probably stealing from one of the firm's clients.
WHAT FOLLOWS IS WHAT PERPLEXITY PRODUCED:
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The Case of the Missing Revenue
At the prestigious firm of Ledger & Logic, the morning began as usual: the aroma of coffee mingled with the faint scent of freshly printed balance sheets. But today, something was off. Ms. Park, the head accountant, was hunched over her desk, eyes darting between the income statement and the cash flow report, her fingers nervously tapping the edge of the fiscal calendar.
“Strange variance in the revenue again,” she muttered, highlighting numbers with the intensity of a forensic auditor. The asset manager, Mr. Kim, peeked over her shoulder. “Did you check the subsidiary accounts? Last month’s reconciliation didn’t quite add up.”
Ms. Park nodded, flipping through a stack of inventory reports. “I did. But there’s an expense entry for ‘Mystery Amortization’—and I can’t find any supporting documents.” She frowned, recalling the audit last quarter, when a similar anomaly appeared under ‘depreciation’ for office plants.
As the team gathered for their weekly consolidation meeting, the boss announced, “We need to address the liability on our client’s books. The equity position looks weaker every month.” The room fell silent. Even the intern, who had just learned the difference between accrual and actual cash, sensed trouble.’
Suddenly, Mr. Kim spoke up. “I noticed the same thing in the reconciliation for our biggest client. The audit trail leads to a fiscal black hole—right into Mr. Cho’s office.” All eyes turned to Mr. Cho, who was busy pretending to do a subsidiary inventory count.
With a dramatic flourish, Ms. Park produced the incriminating balance sheet. “It’s clear: someone is siphoning off assets and hiding them under bogus expense and depreciation entries. The only question is—how long has this been going on?”
The office buzzed with whispers. In accounting, numbers never lie—but sometimes, accountants do.
The word list:
Here is a list of 20 technical accounting terms that can be challenging for advanced adult English learners whose native language is Korean. Each term includes its standard IPA phonetic transcription, highlighting sounds that are often difficult for Korean speakers (such as /r/, /l/, /v/, /f/, /θ/, /ð/, /z/, and certain vowels).
Term IPA Pronunciation
- accounting /əˈkaʊn.tɪŋ/
- asset /ˈæ.sɛt/
- liability /ˌlaɪ.əˈbɪl.ə.ti/
- equity /ˈɛk.wɪ.ti/
- revenue /ˈrɛv.əˌnuː/
- expense /ɪkˈspɛns/
- depreciation /dɪˌpriː.ʃiˈeɪ.ʃən/
- amortization /əˌmɔːr.taɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/
- accrual /əˈkruː.əl/
- reconciliation /rɪˌkɒn.sɪl.iˈeɪ.ʃən/
- inventory /ˈɪn.vənˌtɔːr.i/
- audit /ˈɔː.dɪt/
- balance sheet /ˈbæ.ləns ʃiːt/
- income statement /ˈɪn.kʌm ˈsteɪt.mənt/
- cash flow /kæʃ floʊ/
- fiscal /ˈfɪs.kəl/
- variance /ˈveə.ri.əns/
- subsidiary /səbˈsɪd.iˌɛr.i/
- consolidation /kənˌsɒl.ɪˈdeɪ.ʃən/
- reconciliation /rɪˌkɒn.sɪl.iˈeɪ.ʃən/
Notes on Pronunciation Challenges:
- /r/ and /l/ distinctions (liability, reconciliation, accrual, balance)
- /v/ and /b/ (revenue, variance)
- /f/ and /p/ (fiscal, profit)
- /θ/ and /ð/ (method, although not in this list, is common in accounting)
- Vowel differences, especially /æ/, /ɪ/, /ʌ/, /ə/
- Stress patterns in multisyllabic words (depreciation, amortization, consolidation)
- These terms are essential in accounting and are frequently sources of pronunciation errors for Korean speakers due to the differences in sound inventories and syllable structure between English and Korean.
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Not bad, eh! For this lesson, the MT4 is breaking up the sentences into rhythm groups, identifying the word with the most emphasis and then gesturing (jesturing!) on that word with the left hand tapping on the right deltoid muscle, termed the Syllable Butterfly. (You can see the training for that in this lesson from the Spring 2025 course.)
