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Can adult learners achieve native levels? | ||
Tags: Native Fluency | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Hiiro Yui Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4718 days ago 111 posts - 126 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese | Message 121 of 303 12 October 2012 at 4:01am | IP Logged | |||||
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? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 122 of 303 12 October 2012 at 4:07am | IP Logged | |||||
If you gain the ability of a native speaker, you will have acquired an instinctive knowledge of exactly where the boundaries of each sounds are and how far you can push them. Sounds are not precise points, they are zones or ranges of possibility. There is no such thing as tricking a native into thinking you did it right. If it sounds right consistently, you got it right, that's all. Yes, there is a lot of variety between speakers, and that's why I wouldn't advocate in favour of shadowing or copying one specific person -- it's this range of acceptable variations within sounds that you need to internalize. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4669 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 123 of 303 12 October 2012 at 4:25am | IP Logged | |||||
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I've never ever seen a job ad with ''make sure you have no trace of a foreign accent''. I've seen ''we are very strict when it comes to the language level, you have to speak German well in order to understand our patients''. Who cares if you have a perfect native-like accent with A1/A2 level, when you need at least C2 to understand elder Austrians in a hospital, most of whom speak more dialect than the standard language anyway.
Not even foreign actors can get the American English right, even after 20 years in Hollywood Salma Hayek still has a strong Mexican accent. Arnold Schwarzenegger too. Charlize Theron is one of rare non English speaking actresses who speak with a convincing West Coast US accent, but it's because she came as a young teenager to he US. (And Afrikaans and English must be one of the most closest languages). All Croatian actors who went to Hollywood in their 30ies/40ies have a strong Croatian accent: Mira Furlan (Andreas Katsulas on Babylon 5, and Danielle Rousseau on Lost), and Rade Serbedzija ( Gregorovitch in ''Harry Potter''). Ivana Miličević went to the USA as a child, but I can still sense the Slavic-ness in her American accent.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afAvJ349PIM Edited by Medulin on 12 October 2012 at 4:41am 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 124 of 303 12 October 2012 at 6:25am | IP Logged | |||||
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I will leave the high-tech debate to @Arekkusu and go with @Medulin. The plain truth is that the chances of developing some sort of native-like accent at an adult age are extremely remote. That doesn't mean impossible, just highly unlikely. What more is there to be said?
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| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 125 of 303 12 October 2012 at 12:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
In that thread I wanted to show people's attitude towards pronunciation. With such attitudes people will never reach a descent accent. it is possible to develop at least a close-to-native accent even if you are adult, but you usually have to work for it separately. 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? 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 126 of 303 12 October 2012 at 12:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
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. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 127 of 303 12 October 2012 at 12:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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such courses exist where people learn languages professionally.
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| Hiiro Yui Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4718 days ago 111 posts - 126 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese | Message 128 of 303 12 October 2012 at 12:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Марк,
Why does that need to happen in a classroom, though? If that kind of thing were available online, the people who have the passion for perfection would take advantage of it. Some people don't have the right attitude for it, but that shouldn't stop us from helping those that do. The question "How common is it to attain native levels?" has already been debated, and I agree it's rare. My question is "How can we change that?" Couldn't the acceptable boundaries of individual sounds be demonstrated by one person, allowing the learner to copy along using the recording, a graph of the waveform, and images of tongue and lip positions? Edited by Hiiro Yui on 12 October 2012 at 12:32pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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