The Secrets of Great Speech Revealed!
The nuts and bolts of the spoken word, so often only learned through blind luck, or through some vague form of instinctive social osmosis, are at last comprehensively laid out in an easy to learn and most importantly fun to speak course!
Speech knowledge truly imparts great power – the power of seemingly limitless communication confidence.
Fun listen-and-repeat exercises are peppered throughout with countless tips, techniques and expert knowledge – all designed to ensure that your speech will be clearly heard, easily understood, readily enjoyed and happily remembered – with each and every syllable you utter!
You will also learn how to speak British English “without an accent” – that is the Neutral Standard English (N.S.E.) accent – as taught to classical actors and as heard on the BBC for generations.
In the past, this way speaking has also been referred to as R.P. (Received Pronunciation). However, it has since evolved and is perhaps now better described not only as N.S.E. but also as “Dictionary English” or even “a non-accent”!
It is what audio casting directors want to hear whenever they stipulate “no regional accents, please”.
Not to be confused with the squashed, flat, drawl occasionally spoken by some of the very poshest British public school educated landed gentry, TheSpeechCoach.pro teaches a neutral, open, global accent – it is the accent as taught in the supplementary audio recordings of world-renowned British English as a Foreign Language courses.
Consequently, it is the English accent that is most readily understood by multiple nationalities – and as such is incredibly useful when addressing global audiences – either over Zoom or in person.
It has, of course, the added great fun benefit of allowing you to reveal where you are originally from only when you wish to!
Unlock the powerful secrets of the spoken word so you can speak with humour, with gravitas and with everything in between!
“Why Did I Create TheSpeechCoach.pro? “
“There is no other index of someone’s character so keen as their voice.” – Benjamin Disraeli
Hello! I am Glen McCready and I have been a speech, voice and acting coach ever since my teaching career began at the turn of the century when I was invited to return to my old drama school, The Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, to stand in for my great friend, the extraordinary, endlessly inspiring Head of Voice, Caryll Ziegler.
Caryll trained me alongside Hilary Wood, Michael Griffiths and Stewart Pearce – who was my own Head of Voice throughout my Webber training and later was Master of Voice at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre alongside Mark Rylance. Stewart also famously trained Margaret Thatcher and Princess Diana and he remains a very dear, valued friend and colleague to this day.
As well as all my coaching work with actors and aspiring actors, I have brought specialist drama school speech and voice training techniques into the corporate, professional and wider worlds – working with everyone from GPs, lawyers, CEOs, broadcasters, tax inspectors, business high fliers to even the odd politician. But then aren’t they all? Kidding! Just kidding!
In tandem with all my teaching is my ongoing and extensive work as an actor and voice actor – that is, as a professional “PRO” speaker and practitioner.
Stage work includes: Eddie in Blood Brothers (West End), Sgt Trotter in The Mousetrap (West End), Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Eye), Son in A Voyage Round My Father (Southwold) and Richard Burton in Steven Berkoff’s CORPSE (London Pleasance Theatre & Upstairs at the Gatehouse Theatre, Highgate).
Film & Television includes: Jack in Above the Clouds, Signor in Russell T Davies’ Years and Years, Henry Bowater in Hotel Portofino, Boss in Office Romance 2.0, Arthur Symons in Casanova’s Love Letters and Manager in The Value of Hard Work.
I have narrated upwards of 200 audiobooks (five times a recipient of the American Audiofile Magazine’s Earphones Award), appeared in numerous audio dramas – most recently as Richard Burton in Steven Berkoff’s CORPSE, voiced countless characters in groundbreaking video games including creating the role of the Harry Potter character Zygmunt Budge, “the wizarding world’s most powerful potioneer” and inventor of Felix Felicis or Liquid Luck, in J K Rowling’s Wonderbook: Book of Potions. Other games include: Robinson: The Journey, Strange Brigade, Sniper Elite: Zombie Army Trilogy, Sniper Elite: Zombie Army 4: Dead War, Total War: Warhammer III, SpellForce 3: Soul Harvest, Layers of Fear 2, The Pillars of the Earth, Blackguards, Blackguards 2, Evil Genius 2, Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Adventures Episodes 1-4 and has spent the last 4 years voicing and motion-capturing 21 characters in a forthcoming epic fantasy RPG.
Documentary narrations include: Van Gogh: A New Way of Seeing, Easter in Art, Leonardo: The Works, The Impressionists: Exhibition in Screen, Rembrandt: From the National Gallery, London and The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Our Universe 3D, Egypt 3D and Sharks 3D.
Animation voice acting includes: Dragon Rider, Trojan Horace, Breaking Ground and Herb’s Rubbish Day Out.
I have provided numerous commercial voiceovers for clients in the U.K., all over Europe and America.
I work extensively as a voice in the education sector – particularly in English as a foreign language recordings. These require a solid grounding in phonetics and the ability to speak either with no accent at all – or with many! Clients include: Cambridge University Press, Pearson Education, Longman, Oxford University Press, Heinemann, Richmond, Sanoma and many more.
Corporate narration clients include: Barclays Bank, VOLVO, Royal Bank of Scotland, PWC and many more.
TheSpeechCoach.pro started its life as a listen-and-repeat CD which I would give to my many, many one-to-one students so that they could work independently of me as quickly as possible – thus saving them a great deal of money and freeing me up to work with as many more people as I possibly could.
Over the years, I have steadily scaled up that original CD recording into the course it is today – TheSpeechCoach.pro – comprising all the many secrets of great, impactful speech and practical phonetics, as taught to actors and professional speakers for at least the last hundred years – but which has been sadly unavailable in schools and to almost everyone else outside of expensive specialist private tuition.
With the recent very exciting and long overdue drive to introduce “oracy” and speech training to the national curriculum – to counter the insidious rise of countless essays written by Chat GPT! – there has never been a better time to brush up your own spoken eloquence and get ahead of the curve!
Don’t let your kids‘ soon-to-be-acquired knockout interview, public speaking and debating skills put your own to shame!
TheSpeechCoach.pro is, at long last, the democratisation of speech training!
Start work with me at TheSpeechCoach.pro today! Who knows? You may even enjoy it! Confession: “fun” is a component of the course that I have endeavoured to make ever-present. So many of us, when given a choice of either “doing a bit of public speaking” or “death” only half-jokingly opt for the latter.
A little speech knowledge, cannily applied, goes a long, long way and can be utterly transformative – boosting confidence levels into the stratosphere and making people feel they’ve been made anew -like a totally new person. I know. I’ve seen it happen – time and time and time again. This is why I have never, ever tired of teaching even after all these years.
The magic of great speech weaves its spell just as strongly on me as it does on anyone else – a great story, compellingly told, remains as irresistible today as it was when the first ever words were spoken!
“The written word goes from the eye to the brain. The spoken word goes from the ear to the heart.”
Happy speaking!
Glen
Testimonials
It is my pleasure to recommend this cultivated young man as a drama teacher and vocal coach having seen and enjoyed his work in recent times. Glen was my assistant on a recent workshop of my latest play and I watched him as he approached his craft with care and precision. I have little doubt that his teaching and guidance can only be of immense benefit to our profession.
Glen McCready is one of the 3 experts who recorded the sound files for my Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. It includes a sound file of every entry in the dictionary – nearly 100,000 words and phrases.
Glen demonstrated that he had been well trained phonetically, and could follow the phonetic transcriptions accurately. He was fully competent to achieve what we needed; his skills as a voice teacher are underpinned by a solid training in phonetics.
TIP : If you are searching for a British accent dictionary, you can find the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary here on Amazon
I ran a department of the BBC World Service, BBC English, for about 10 years, and we made programmes to teach English by television, for countries around the world.
One of my first and best actors was Glen McCready - his comedy rendition of "chef trapped in the refrigerator" lives in my memory! I then set up my own company, EFS TV , continuing the same work and adding audio and radio recording for the same purpose, and I've continued to work with Glen for the past 20 years.
He is a most charming, good-natured, reliable, inventive and totally credible actor and reader of scripts. As world-wide clients need precision of pronunciation and diction for their students, I have come to rely on Glen more and more.
He also gives extra value in the studio, as he is eagle eyed on script errors and inconsistencies, and is a reliable advisor on current usage, grammar, ELT standards, and other issues that arise.
His diction is immaculate, and he has boundless stamina for what can seem like endless scripts. I have the greatest pleasure in endorsing this talented man, as actor, reader, and teacher.
Glen was an outstanding student of mine at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in the early 1990’s when I was Head of Voice, and I’ve watched his career evolve as a first-class Voice-over Artist, and as a consummate Actor.
Now I’m thrilled to mentor and observe another aspect of Glen’s evolutionary creative capacity - that being Voice Mastery and the teaching of the vocal arts.
If you are looking for something special, in other words if you’re seeking a Voice Expert who has style, dynamism, flair, and immense compassion – Glen is your man.
And it’s my special pleasure to see him achieve this and to hear his voice like a meteor lighting up the skies of success with such ease.
Glen is the consummate professional and I thoroughly enjoy working with him on our VO recordings. Alongside Glen's polished and considered performance, it is clear that Glen researches the character and context, fully taking onboard reference material, direction and script notes. Glen offers ideas and feedback on the script, which really tunes and rounds out the character depth, nuance and accuracy.
Glen's recording setup also means that remote sessions are both efficient and high quality - we've been extremely happy with both the performance and the technical quality of the recordings.
I would work with Glen again in a heartbeat.
I was fortunate enough to be Head of Drama at Brighton College at the time when Glen joined the Sixth Form. His boundless energy and appetite for creative work led to our putting on an unprecedented number of plays over 2 years, all in their different ways memorable.
His charm, good humour and instinctive sense of stagecraft ensured that he marked himself out as one to watch, in roles from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to Black Comedy to The Pirates of Penzance to Pygmalion.
In fact, as Professor Higgins he convincingly displayed the same skills as a voice coach that he is seeking to do now in his professional life, though I am sure in a more patient and persuasive, less threatening manner!
If you want to be encouraged to master the possibilities of your own voice in conveying the spoken word, in fact to believe in your own capabilities, then Glen is your man!
I have worked with Glen on many projects over the years and he has proved time and again his mastery of the spoken word.
But he is also highly skilled in helping others understand the whys, wherefores and most important, the hows of our complex language, that we take so for granted and in that I think he has few peers.
I’ve no doubt that your time with Glen will be highly beneficial and leave you with the confidence in your spoken English that you seek.
If you aspire to speak authentic, beautiful English put yourself in the hands of Glen McCready at TheSpeechCoach.pro. His is the standard to aspire to.
Celebrate the Language of Shakespeare.
Glen is a delight to work with. A consummate professional at every level. This does not detract from his sense of fun and enjoyment in his work; that is infectious and makes my life as director that much easier.
Glen is willing to play with the material and draw out things in a nuanced and imaginative way and so, very collaborative. I can't wait to work with him again. I hope there will be many more opportunities.
I have known Glen for fifteen years, and worked with him on audiobooks and radio dramas, as well as seeing and hearing his work in other media.
He is warm, generous, versatile and dedicated; precise and considerate in equal measure. His skill-set and the range of his work make him a brilliant guide to anyone wanting to hone their vocal skills, and (crucially) will help them understand the tiny shifts that make all the difference; and which will help them sound more instinctively natural in British English.
I have known Glen for over 20 years as a Voice Actor and he is a consummate professional with the most beautiful voice and diction. He’s also an experienced actor with a wealth of experience and great talent!
He’s wonderfully calm and kind and generous to work with as well as incredibly supportive. I have no doubt that anyone who works with him will enjoy it very much, learn a huge amount and have fun as he is a joy to work with.
I’ve worked with Glen on numerous projects and he was the first person I went to when casting for my latest audio-drama series.
My character’s linguistic tone had to be unique yet subtle so Glen was the obvious person to go to, with his vocal range and nuance. I can’t wait to work with him again!
I’m always excited when I see we have a new audiobook for Glen to narrate, for two reasons. He’s a wonderful narrator and an absolute pleasure to work with.
His emails brighten up my inbox and make the process of scheduling recordings and ironing out the details all go smoothly. He undertakes diligent preparation for our audiobooks and will reach out to discuss his queries, helping to make the book the best it can be.
Most importantly, he consistently delivers wonderful, engaging and enjoyable performances. His grasp of characterisation, accents, expression and mood make him one of the best in the business. His enthusiasm comes across in every story and listeners, myself included, love to have him read to us.
Glen narrated the audio version of my book, ‘Winning Minds: Secrets from the Language of Leadership’. He did a tremendous job, reading with warmth, depth and emotion and truly bringing my narrative to life. I am so pleased that he is sharing his talents with a wider audience. I’m sure he will help many aspiring leaders find their true voice.
I was fortunate to have Glen as a wonderful member of the three-hander cast for my musical Counterpoint at The Gatehouse Upstairs in London.
He is totally dedicated to his craft, gives one hundred per cent to both text and songs, has boundless enthusiasm coupled with a deep understanding and expression of the written word and sings beautifully.
He brought the character of Luke to life with his performance and added so much to the production with his teamwork and standard of excellence, and it was a joy to work with him and his positive energy and creative talent.
Glen is one of those (relatively rare!) performers who not only come into the space fully prepared, but who also self-adjusts, quite naturally, throughout the session.
It was immediately apparent to me that he would hit his mark every single time — and he did. Incredibly aware of his own range and abilities, Glen is an absolute joy to direct and executes notes effortlessly. Present, naturally humorous, solid and reliable, I would recommend him without hesitation
I am Dharmendra Sheth from Surat, Gujarat, India. I have studied, and also taught, phonetics and phonology to non-native learners of English at a local university here.
However, as a non-native user of English, I am always a little unsure about the finer aspects of pronunciation. Luckily I came across your course. I have been learning English pronunciation via your course for more than a month now, and I am about to complete it. I must say your course is immensely helpful to me. It has excellent audio and video quality and ample practice material.
You don't know how much your course has helped me. By just listening to you and copying, my vocal problem has been solved to a great extent. Now I can speak for hours without straining my vocal chords. Plus my English "sounds" English, according to my friends and colleagues!
I'm from North Pole, Alaska. I registered for thespeechcoach.pro webinars so that I could improve my British accent for future voice acting gigs and local stage productions. I have enjoyed the lessons very much! I include them as part of my vocal warm-ups, when I'm preparing for a stage role or a British character in a novel. I'm currently narrating the classic British novel "Jane Eyre," by Charlotte Bronte, and I finally have the confidence to record the entire story, using a British accent. I have recommended this course to all my actor friends. Thanks, Mr. McCready, for making these webinars available to us lazy-speaking Americans!
Glen is the best kind of teacher - passionate and enthusiastic, and he also knows his subject inside out. He really cares about the spoken word and he really cares about the people he teaches. Learning from him was easy; now, instead of feeling lost and at sea, I feel confident and raring to go. Glen is a master of the spoken word, and a wonderful teacher.
We had the pleasure of working with Glen McCready on two voice-over projects. He was professional and brought fantastic energy and creative ideas to the multiple roles he played. His remote studio setup worked well and he sounded great! High marks.
What can TheSpeechCoach.pro do for you?
Acquire a Neutral Standard English (N.S.E.) British accent, as taught for generations to professional speakers – both at U.K. drama schools and in expensive specialist private coaching sessions. Also known as “R.P.” (Received Pronunciation), Dictionary English (because the accent vowel sounds match those as listed in British English dictionary pronunciation guides) and BBC English (because, in days gone by, the BBC rather unfairly insisted on all their broadcasters being able to leave their regional accents at the studio door!).
TheSpeechCourse.pro allows you to add a neutral gear to your speech, an accent which is neither “posh”, nor detectable as coming from a specific region.
You will not permanently lose your own distinctive native accent (unless you choose to). Rather, you will be adding a more neutral and more globally instantly comprehensible accent gear to your vocal artillery.
TheSpeechCoach.pro explains and makes crystal clear – in a user-friendly, fun, informal listen-and-repeat format – voice and speech techniques which, for so many years, have been untaught in general education and remained the exclusive skill set of actors, broadcasters and professional speakers.
TheSpeechCoach.pro is for anybody who wants to understand the practical mechanics of the spoken word, address areas in their voice and speech that they have always wanted to improve and thereby gain the far-reaching and empowering personal confidence that this knowledge invariably brings with it.
This course is a distillation of the extraordinary, top-flight voice and speech training that I received at The Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Arts from Caryll Ziegler, Stewart Pearce and Michael Griffiths along with my 20+ years of teaching experience. Without this knowledge behind me, the work I have done and continue to do in the fields of audiobook aeration, video game voice acting, animation, voice overs and more might never have been possible.
My very first teaching job was when Caryll invited me to cover her classes and so I was briefly acting Head of Voice at Webber D and I have dearly loved all my subsequent teaching and coaching work, returning to it time and again, whenever my acting workload allows it.
All that being said, what can TheSpeechCoach.pro do for you?
Do you want to…
– soften your native accent?
– strengthen your speech?
– improve the tone of your voice?
– never be accused of monotony in your presentations again?
– learn the practical phonetics of the Neutral Standard English/often so-called “RP”/Dictionary English (as in dictionary pronunciation guides) British accent?
– learn what to do (and what not to do!) whenever a VO casting breakdown reads “no regional accents” but also says “no RP!”
– improve your neutral delivery for presentations to global audiences, narrating documentaries, performing audiobooks, acting in video games, theatre productions, movies and more?
– learn practical the International Phonetic Alphabet – thereby removing so much of the confusions caused by unpredictable and illogical English spellings?
– learn how to hear regional accents much more precisely by comparing them first to NSE?
– learn the secrets of “gravitas”?
– learn how to make your spoken word achieve greater impact?
– learn the secrets of voice and speech that drama schools have taught for decades?
– have access to thorough, far-ranging pronunciation and accent drills to give to your ELT students, thereby leaving you free to focus on teaching linguistics and so progress your students far more rapidly?
– learn how to phonetically annotate scripts so that, even in the most searingly emotional sections, you are never in danger of reverting to your native accent and breaking character?
– learn how to annotate audition sides for whenever you are trying out for a “soundalike” job?
– speed up your accent learning skills by first comparing the sounds of whichever accent you wish to acquire with the sounds of the NSE accent – thereby ensuring you neither do too little – nor, crucially – too much?
– learn the accent that David Dimbleby, Maggie Smith, Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Hugh Bonneville and many, many more accomplished speakers use with such consummate ease and devastating effectiveness?
– strengthen specific aspects of your voice and speech (e.g. address problems with the “R” sound, sibilance, removing the confusion and reduced impact of not voicing sounds which need to be voiced – plus many, many more tricky areas)?
– remove the chances of future problems or bad habits destroying your confidence or reducing your impact by having lifetime access to your very own “voice and speech maintenance tool kit” available whenever you may need it?
In voice and speech, as so often in life, “knowledge is power”.
TheSpeechCoach.pro allows you to clearly see, hear and improve the mechanics of your voice and speech.
Things that we all too often take for granted, or assume that we could never fully understand because we are neither a trained linguist nor a modern-day Henry Higgins are all made crystal clear, user-friendly and, dare I say it, even fun! (At least, that was always my intention!)
I still find my voice and speech coaching endlessly fulfilling because, despite my knowing and teaching so many of the “tips, tricks & secrets” of the spoken word, these same techniques, when they are expertly or instinctively used by an electrifying speaker, all still work all their spellbinding magic on me. Whenever I hear a riveting storyteller or a masterful public speaker, I am as swept along, enthralled and bewitched as any other member of the audience.
If I want to analyse precisely the techniques they are employing, I always – always! – have to make a gargantuan effort of will in order to switch on my “SpeechCoach ears” to stand even the remotest chance of identifying them! This phenomenon – the ability to mesmerise and move by dint of one’s speaking voice alone – is about as close to a Harry Potter level of magic as most of us are ever likely to come!
“The written word goes from the eye to the brain.
The spoken word goes from the ear to the heart.”
Are you interested in:
Perfecting your neutral British English accent
Accent softening
Correcting a speech impediment
Improving your presentation skills
Boosting your confidence for public speaking
Making a great best man speech... but you're terrified!
Are you an actor, interested in:
Period speech for actors
English accents for American and other non-UK actors
Speech for voice-overs