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Can adult learners achieve native levels?

  Tags: Native Fluency
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
303 messages over 38 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 17 ... 37 38 Next >>
LaughingChimp
Senior Member
Czech Republic
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Speaks: Czech*

 
 Message 129 of 303
12 October 2012 at 12:52pm | IP Logged 
Hiiro Yui wrote:
LaughingChimp, why wouldn’t that work? I’m just saying 3D images would help more than IPA descriptions alone, and combined with voice software, even people who are hard-of-hearing could sound native. Who’s against giving people more help?


Because native speakers target the sound, not tongue positions. If you give people headphones that change what they hear, they will try to compensate so they sound normal in the headphones, without even realizing it.

I think you are overcomplicating it. You don't need IPA, don't focus too much on individual sounds. Try to pronounce whole words and phrases and try to make them sound native.

Quote:
While experimenting, I might find a way to make a sound that tricks natives into thinking I did it their way (which wouldn't satisfy me).


As you said, even native speakers pronounce some sounds in slightly different ways. If it sounds native, it can't be incorrect.
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beano
Diglot
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United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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 Message 130 of 303
12 October 2012 at 12:59pm | IP Logged 
Does any native speaker of a language actually care if someone from another country speaks with traces of a foreign accent? Obviously a thick accent can sometimes impede communication but as long as natives can readily understand you, is there a need to go further?
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Arekkusu
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Canada
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 Message 131 of 303
12 October 2012 at 1:04pm | IP Logged 
beano wrote:
Does any native speaker of a language actually care if someone from another country
speaks with traces of a foreign accent? Obviously a thick accent can sometimes impede communication but
as long as natives can readily understand you, is there a need to go further?

There is certainly a desire to go further.
1 person has voted this message useful



Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
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 Message 132 of 303
12 October 2012 at 1:11pm | IP Logged 
beano wrote:
Does any native speaker of a language actually care if someone from
another country speaks with traces of a foreign accent? Obviously a thick accent can
sometimes impede communication but as long as natives can readily understand you, is
there a need to go further?

The same can be said about anything in a language: grammar, spelling, even vocabulary
sometimes. Then, many people speak with thick accents, they do not reach "traces of
foreign accent".
5 persons have voted this message useful



LaughingChimp
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4700 days ago
346 posts - 594 votes 
Speaks: Czech*

 
 Message 133 of 303
12 October 2012 at 1:24pm | IP Logged 
garyb wrote:
Марк wrote:
Imagine that you take special phonetic courses. You get multiple
explanations, you listen to recordings and repeat after them, you are corrected all the
time. And this happens regularly: you have several classes a week. Even in a moth you
will have great improvement, but who takes such classes?


And where do such classes exist? Show me one, or even a tutor who knows enough about
phonetics to give such instruction, and I'll sign up. Like I said in my earlier post,
even those of us who want to improve our pronunciation and accent tend to suffer from a
lack of resources to do so, combined with terrible advice like "just experiment until you
produce the right sounds" - if that works for you then you're probably already one of the
lucky people who doesn't need advice or instruction on pronunciation.



It's good advice. I don't have a special talent, I used to have the same problems like everyone else until I found this out. When learning pronunciation, most people use a bottom-up approach - they try to learn individual sounds and then they try to connect them to words and then sentences. But that doesn't work very well, because the sounds may interact in unexpected ways and the result may be very different from native pronunciation even when the sounds sound fine in isolation.

It's better to take a top-down approach - learn the overal sound first, learn to immitate the sound of whole words and sentences without trying to figure out the phonemes. (imagine you are trying to immitate animal sounds, if you don't know how to start) It may feel incomfortable first, because you feel like you don't really know what you're doing, but the results are much better. You may not sound exactly like a native speaker, but you will sound much more natural and native like than most people who learn pronunciation the usual way.
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beano
Diglot
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United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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 Message 134 of 303
12 October 2012 at 1:28pm | IP Logged 
Марк wrote:
   
The same can be said about anything in a language: grammar, spelling, even vocabulary
sometimes. Then, many people speak with thick accents, they do not reach "traces of
foreign accent".


True enough. But I still think that some people over-emphasise the importance of speaking with as little accent as possible. The vast majority of those who learn a foreign language do have a perceptible accent. Unless it is so thick that natives struggle to understand, I don't see why anyone should make a fuss over accent issues. Several of my colleagues come from overseas, they all speak great English but you can tell they are foreign as soon as they open their mouths. The fact that they don't sound native doesn't affect their lives in any way.
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Марк
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Russian Federation
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Speaks: Russian*

 
 Message 135 of 303
12 October 2012 at 1:53pm | IP Logged 
beano wrote:


True enough. But I still think that some people over-emphasise the importance of speaking
with as little accent as possible. The vast majority of those who learn a foreign
language do have a perceptible accent. Unless it is so thick that natives struggle to
understand, I don't see why anyone should make a fuss over accent issues. Several of my
colleagues come from overseas, they all speak great English but you can tell they are
foreign as soon as they open their mouths. The fact that they don't sound native doesn't
affect their lives in any way.

Some. But there are really few such people in the real life.That's a general desire to
speak correctly.
1 person has voted this message useful



espejismo
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Russian Federation
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Speaks: Russian*, English
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 Message 136 of 303
12 October 2012 at 2:08pm | IP Logged 
garyb wrote:
Марк wrote:
Imagine that you take special phonetic courses. You get multiple
explanations, you listen to recordings and repeat after them, you are corrected all the
time. And this happens regularly: you have several classes a week. Even in a moth you
will have great improvement, but who takes such classes?


And where do such classes exist? Show me one, or even a tutor who knows enough about
phonetics to give such instruction, and I'll sign up. Like I said in my earlier post,
even those of us who want to improve our pronunciation and accent tend to suffer from a
lack of resources to do so, combined with terrible advice like "just experiment until you
produce the right sounds" - if that works for you then you're probably already one of the
lucky people who doesn't need advice or instruction on pronunciation.


If your target language is English, there are accent reduction classes (I saw ads for them in the US). I wonder how they're structured....


1 person has voted this message useful



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