There are many activities I do with adult learners (I tutor them at my home), which include among others, recording dialogues with my own voice and burning them to CD's. The pupils then take them home and follow the printed text I provide them. This activity has many advantages: it improves the accent, and also causes the student to have some progress with his speaking.
If the person has listening difficulties, I suggest them to use headphones, while practicing the dialogues. By the way, you don't have to record only dialogues, there are several texts, easy ones to be read and be repeated by the pupil.
If the teacher himself has problems with accent, then try to google the words "breaking news esl", and you will get to a site breakingnewsenglish.com, totally FREE, with lots of texts and exercises online, classified in different levels. All the texts are recorded, and you can download them also for free. The activities following the texts are innumerable....
There are many activities you can do besides the listening activities:
After teaching a certain sentence pattern, give him a "find the differences" exercise: two very similar pictures, and the pupil will say: There is a....... in picture A, but a......... in picture B. Google the words "find the differences" on Google images or any other search engine, and you will find hundreds of images.
Another activity: Take an image from a magazine, hide most of it with construction paper and leave just a small detail. It's a guessing activity to encourage the pupil to ask questions: "Is it a....? etc.
There are many other things to do, I will be pleased to help if you need more suggestions.
And here is what I wrote to someone on this forum about how I improve my own accent:
"I second my colleagues' replies, no reason to feel the way you do about your accent. I myself am a Brazilian and many English natives recognize my accent immediately!
What I do to improve mine, just for the sake of being understood and pronouncing correctly so that people don't misunderstand me, is this:
- I listen to lots of recorded lectures, which I find in the web, some of them even in YouTube;
- I speak to English natives all the time to a point in which I subconsciously absorb the accent;
- I frequently watch movies without translations in order to force myself to listen to what is being said and also absorb the accent;
These and any other way through which one can be exposed to the native spoken language is a blast. Even songs! Listen to them and sing along.. use YouTube, too!
By the way, I strongly recommend these suggestions when teaching English. Expose the students as much as possible to natural, original, native language. The use of recordings in class is a must.
I hope it helps.
Syl's English Corner - Learn English and Have Funhttp://www.ginnegar.0catch.com