fangy Diglot Newbie Poland Joined 4609 days ago 7 posts - 9 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Japanese
| Message 1 of 5 16 October 2013 at 2:04pm | IP Logged |
Hi,
I have a Vietnamese friend, whose pronounciation in English makes it almost impossible to
communicate with him. I was wondering if anyone knows any good techniques of improving
pronounciation by oneself. I'm asking especially people speaking tonal languages
(Vietnamese, Chinese etc) because I think this is the source of the problem for him - his
English sounds like Vietnamese ...
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Retinend Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4307 days ago 283 posts - 557 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), French
| Message 2 of 5 16 October 2013 at 3:56pm | IP Logged |
It's funny you say "by oneself" because I presume that it can only be done by oneself. The
tongue is a muscle, after all.
Speak along with a model of the target language, repeatedly (choose material which can be
understood). Exaggerate the mouth movements, speak loudly, and avoid mumbling.
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fangy Diglot Newbie Poland Joined 4609 days ago 7 posts - 9 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Japanese
| Message 3 of 5 16 October 2013 at 4:49pm | IP Logged |
Of course you need to exrecise your muscle, but you can be guided by a teacher, who will
choose excercises for you etc.
That's also why I'm asking - which books and maybe online resources may come in handy in
this case ?
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Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5380 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian
| Message 4 of 5 16 October 2013 at 4:58pm | IP Logged |
I would potentially agree that the changes need to be made by the speaker on his own, however, if he speaks with such a thick accent, we can presume he doesn't perceive why he's not being understood and has no idea what he's doing wrong. In other words, he could benefit from having someone competent sort, prioritize and expose the most pressing issues. Whether this speaker would bother to make the required effort to yield a significant difference is quite another matter, though. If he's come to such a point, it's likely he's never cared and won't start caring all of a sudden.
Edited by Arekkusu on 16 October 2013 at 4:59pm
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fangy Diglot Newbie Poland Joined 4609 days ago 7 posts - 9 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Japanese
| Message 5 of 5 16 October 2013 at 5:12pm | IP Logged |
He does care, that is why I'm asking. His English in terms of vocabulary and grammar is
still not perfect (somewhere around B2 I would guess), and he reads some textbooks and
does the excercises, but this does not help with pronounciation in particular. Another
thing is, we are currently changin the country we live in every semester (international
master course) and he has no means of enrolling in a proper English class. I took it upon
myself as a language enthusiast to look for ways he can improve by himself and I thought
this is a good place to start.
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