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Neglecting speaking/acquiring accent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5946 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 9 of 14 19 June 2011 at 1:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Yes there are, but it's never been shown to be either effective or quick.
I would agree that (as a learner) you shouldn't be asked to read anything that you can't pronounce. This is irrespective of how you learn pronunciation.
You've missed the point of your own analogy. You don't learn golf, cricket, rounders or tennis technique simply by watching thousands of hours of the sport before every picking up a club/bat/racquet. No, you get a coach to teach you the basics, and you practice, and you go back to the coach to help refine your technique. Why shouldn't it be the same with pronunciation? Basic training in pronunciation gives you the underlying phonology. Later refinements give you a better accent. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5946 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 10 of 14 19 June 2011 at 1:11pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm not 100% sure, no, but the thing to remember about the effects of minimal pairs is that they are not symmetrical. A native speaker doesn't associate two phonemes as being "close", they're normally just "different". So while it's easy to understand a Spanish sentence if you don't know the difference, when you are trying to be understood, you may as well be saying D or T for all the native speaker's concerned, because the wrong phoneme isn't normally "slightly wrong", it's just "wrong". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6517 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 11 of 14 19 June 2011 at 2:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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There are lots of schools for how one acquires a native-like accent. It is important to realize, however, that the
single most important determiner for how your accent will be is talent. Not sure if it's genetic or if it has something to do with upbringing, but the amount you can improve your accent is quite small. The quality of the accent also seems to be consistent across languages, though modified by the phonetic similarities with one's native language. If you don't have a good accent after studying the language for five minutes, you most likely never will, even after studying for years. You'll probably improve it, but not by very much. Conversely, people who have a good accent in one foreign language don't need to worry much about it when studying other languages. Most likely they'll acquire a good accent without spending a second on minimal pairs or phonetic explanations. This is not to say working on your accent is useless, of course. Those extra few percents of improvement are of course a worthy goal. But it behooves one to be realistic in one's expectations. If you ain't got it, you ain't got it. But you can still become a great polyglot. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Sandman Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5343 days ago 168 posts - 389 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 12 of 14 20 June 2011 at 12:32pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Your coach = my native. I don't think we disagreed there. If you have a native, or a coach (with a lot of time on their hands) then it should probably be okay. If we're forced to mostly imitate recordings though (as self-learners), I think there needs to be a balance between developing a solid "ear" for the language before you start imitating too much on your own (thus suggesting a waiting period before speaking) and, I guess, the practical reality that you WILL start imitating to some degree regardless of your plan and therefore should have the toolbox at your disposal to take an honest swing at it (which I assume is a version of your argument?). Something just seems wrong to me about someone that jumps right into speaking off the bat before they at least have a decent idea of what the language is suppose to be like. I just picture the "poor student" from the Michel Thomas tapes going home after class and speaking on their own, mangling the pronunciation of those words they couldn't quite get right in "class" over and over again, cementing it in their brain, even though they may have been properly taught it initially. What if she doesn't have any more "coaching" or "natives" to constantly consult with? Seems like a recipe for having to relearn muscle-memory, which could be a difficult thing to do. Edited by Sandman on 20 June 2011 at 12:34pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Sandman Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5343 days ago 168 posts - 389 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 13 of 14 20 June 2011 at 12:39pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I wasn't advocating it. I was only using it as an example of a method that some people suggest for getting native type pronunciation. My time is far too short to test it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5946 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 14 of 14 20 June 2011 at 1:54pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I don't think that follows, really. In sports, a coach gives you explicit instruction on technique. The best most native speakers can manage is "no, not like that, like this!" which isn't very helpful because you probably won't be able to hear the difference anyway (or you wouldn't have made the mistake in the first place!)
Almost. Spoken language is composed of a string of "phonemes" (meaningful units of sound -- roughly analogous to letters in a spoken language). When you speak, you produce a string of phonemes. When you listen, you interpret the sound that hits your ear as a string of phonemes -- you do not process every single variation in sound. So as soon as you start engaging with a language, you employ that map. There is no magic in listening-only that delays production of that map, so there is no mechanism by which listening-only will improve performance. On the other hand, there is a rational justification for speaking first -- if you are forced to pronounce it right, the brain has no choice but to recognise that there is a phonemic difference.
Yes, just "jumping in" is wrong. What I'm talking about is conscious instruction in "articulatory phonetics" (the mechanics of producing sounds) and good materials can open this up to the home-learner -- you don't always need a teacher for it. It didn't take me very long to get the hang of making a distinction between aspirated and unaspirated consonants, or to become aware of the difference between voiced and unvoiced. Most of the work I did on this was just physical practice in producing the sounds. The most difficult pronunciation task I've had was learning to pronounce Hindi's retroflex consonants, and no amount of listening would have helped -- it was simply a matter of stretching the muscles to accommodate the new movement and building muscle memory. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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