Dr Cynthia Grover, ‘Teaching English: Creating Accents’

St Catherine’s College proudly presents the second talk in the Michaelmas edition of ‘Catz in Conversation’ – our all-new webinar series by alumni, for everyone.

On Wednesday, 3rd December, Dr Cynthia Grover (1977, Modern Languages) will present her talk ‘Teaching English: Creating Accents’, with valuable expertise drawn directly from her impressive career in languages teaching. Enriched with technical vocabulary, audiovisual resources, and extensive impressions from her personal experience, this talk will offer a fascinating insight into the art and practice of teaching English pronunciation and accent formation.

Following a distinguished career that has taken her from linguistic research to language teaching, translation, and editing across Europe, Dr Grover will explore how English pronunciation is taught, learned, and perceived around the world. Drawing on her background in phonetics and her experience in creating innovative English-learning games for language teachers and adult learners, she will reflect on what it means to “create” an accent, and how choices in pronunciation shape communication, identity, and understanding.

Dr Cynthia Grover

Dr Cynthia Grover (1977, Modern Languages) is a linguist, teacher, and translator working at the intersection of language, technology, and learning. She specialises in the relationship between speech perception and speech production. As a research engineer, she designed computer text-to-speech and automatic speech recognition systems. She has been a university lecturer in linguistics and psychology. At Belgacom (now Proximus), as Senior IT Process Analyst, she designed the company’s IT project management methodology and was an Expert Internal Auditor specialising in cybersecurity (CISA). She has also spent much of her career as an English teacher at various European education companies. Her students are language teachers, interpreters, members of the European parliament, executives, and jobseekers.

Since 2013, Cynthia has been an editor of English, and has edited academic, legal, and audit documents for major European institutions and private clients. She holds a Ph.D. in Psychology (Memorial University of Newfoundland), an M.A. in Linguistics (University of Calgary), and read for her undergraduate degree in Modern Languages at Catz.

When she’s not bringing linguistic precision to complex professional and academic fields, Cynthia enjoys speaking about her extensive expertise to others; previous presentations include BELTA Day 2024, and prevalent publications include ‘Learning English in Belgium’ (2019) and ‘Intonation in English, French, and German: Perception and Production’ (1987).

Perfect for alumni, educators, and language enthusiasts eager to hear from a real expert on the science and craft of English pronunciation, we invite you to book your place now!

To secure your place at our full term of online talks, please see here. All talks in the series are scheduled for either a lunchtime (1-2pm) or an evening (6-7pm) slot. All are free to attend and open to all. Lasting 45 minutes and followed by an audience Q&A, these talks are the perfect chance to strengthen your professional network, to advance your knowledge, and to hear from past generations of Catz alumni working in future-forward fields.

All webinars are hosted on Zoom. Unless stated otherwise, they are recorded and uploaded to our YouTube channel.

Date

3 December, 2025

Time

6 - 7pm

Venue

Online, via Zoom

Price

Free