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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| fairyfountain Senior Member Zimbabwe Joined 6070 days ago 254 posts - 248 votes  5 sounds | Message 1 of 13 28 March 2009 at 12:22am | IP Logged | ||
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I've been quite busy with my studies and thus haven't logged onto this board for a while.
This is going to be a sort of miscellaneous entry. I'll tackle some issues I've been having with English and will ask you guys some questions. Last year, I tried to answer the following question: "which accent to choose, English or American?". Since then, I've kind of chosen my path and picked American English, and I must say that it did work out well - I've had some positive feedback, even if I haven't kind of reached my goal yet. Anyway, I've also decided I'd learn British English on the side, since I'm watching a lot of English shows, and also because I think it'd be nice to be able to switch between the two. Now, my tutor challenged me and told me to have a go at British English - she made me read a text. She then declared my vowels were fine but that my d was too "moist" for an English d, and that my consonants were more American in general. (I didn't flap my ts or anything!) If anyone knows and can hear the difference between English and American d/consonants, please do explain it to me - I think it's just a matter of me not being able to actually *hear* the letters don't sound the same, but it'll eventually get better. Moreover, I am still to find good material to shadow, be it in American English or British English - if you've used an audiobook that really helped you with English or another language, please tell me. I must admit I'm quite skeptical when it comes to shadowing, as I made some progress when it comes to pronunciation, but not thanks to parroting. I'm also looking for language partners - I can help with French pronunciation (and French grammar & conjugation to some extent, even if spelling isn't my forte). I feel like I've reached a plateau when it comes to my English studies - I can express myself quite well and get my message across, but not in the most elegant way. Before, the results of each voice chatting session really showed, and I could tell my hard work had paid off, but now, my level is kind of stagnating, I suppose. As for vocabulary, it seems like watching TV in English daily isn't enough any more - I hate SRS softwares with a passion, but I'll have to find an answer to that vocabulary issue! Finding a good language partner is also difficult, because few people are willing to correct you, and fewer people like to voice chat and to make people repeat after them. I still don't know whether my English will eventually take care of itself or not - I sort of "nourish" it everyday by listening to a lot of things and using it, but it may not be enough. The buzz that you get that makes you think you're literally speeding through a language and learning it super fast is an awesome feeling - however, I guess this is the privilege of beginners. I figured that young children are in the situation that I'm currently in, but they don't really fret about it. The fact of the matter is that toddlers do make mistakes, but they get over it, and learn from them. Then again, there's this whole "nature-nurture" debate. I'm stuck in the middle, because technically, I'm an adult, but I don't believe in all that scientific babble. I thought about reading a book for one of these public domain projects websites. It would be a big achievement, and I'd probably learn a lot from it, but I'm afraid I haven't got the level to go on about doing that just now. On the one hand, watching a show in English is no problem for me, even if I still put on the subtitles so as not to miss anything (but can understand the gist of most shows without them). On the other hand, however, if I open a book, I'll either understand everything or find that I don't know a lot of words, it's a gamble, really. Anyway, I have one big question that sums it all up: how can I make progress faster as an advanced student of English, and how many years do you think are necessary to become fluent in English where you're almost there but not quite there yet? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Dark_Sunshine Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5707 days ago 340 posts - 357 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 2 of 13 28 March 2009 at 12:49am | IP Logged | ||
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On the basis of your writing, you seem perfectly fluent to me. If you feel it's speaking and listening comprehension you need to work on, then I think you're already doing the right things by seeking language exchanges with native speakers, and giving yourself daily exposure to spoken English on TV. Regarding language exchange partners, I think you've obviously reached a level where you definitely need to find native speakers who are educated and use a wide vocabulary - so many native English speakers use their own language very poorly, so I guess this might be difficult.
Are you able to spend any time in England? You can get a lot of British pounds for your Euros at the moment, so it's not too expensive- especially if you live near Paris or in the North West of France. I might be interested in a language exchange as I'm studying French at the moment (although my French is nowhere near your level of English!) but I don't have Skype yet because I need to upgrade my computer -I'm a bit of a technophobe! Also, being British, I have a British accent. I'm not quite sure what your teacher is talking about regarding the difference between an American 'd' and a British 'd'. There is some difference with the pronunciation of 't' sounds, where in words like 'better', the American pronunciation sounds more like a soft 'd' sound, but I'm no expert on phonetics- maybe someone else on the forum can answer this question? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fairyfountain Senior Member Zimbabwe Joined 6070 days ago 254 posts - 248 votes 5 sounds | Message 3 of 13 28 March 2009 at 1:43am | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you for your answer and insight on this issue, Dark_Sunshine.
It doesn't matter whether you've got Skype or not, because I can use any software to voice chat, you'd just have to tell me whether you prefer MSN, AIM, or something else. I didn't use a soft "d" sound for my "t", but I suppose she was being really picky, because saying that my "d" is a little too sloppy to be British is a bit far-fetched. I don't think I'll be able to go to England anytime soon, but I definitely need to get more language exchange partners. Anyway, I'll just "suck it up", as they say, and keep on plowing my way through the English language. It isn't a bad thing really, as I quite enjoy taking it slow, even if sometimes I get a little impatient. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Maestro Groupie Chile Joined 5813 days ago 40 posts - 40 votes | Message 4 of 13 28 March 2009 at 5:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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Indeed, I think you're getting too impatient with this. Your English is awesome (far better than mine at any rate), yet you seem to belittle your achievements. Mastering a language (or any other skill) may take years (10000 hours?). The important thing is to continue to do something everyday and you will get there, focus more on the process rather than on the result, enjoy each book you read and each TV show/movie you watch to the most, see the value in doing these things rather than the result you can get out of them, otherwise you may be discouraged if you don't see too much improvement. Stop seeing the summit of the mountain and look around you, there are wonderful things along the way.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TheBiscuit Tetraglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 5865 days ago 532 posts - 619 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Italian Studies: German, Croatian | Message 5 of 13 28 March 2009 at 7:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think advanced learners of any language need to take into account the law of diminishing returns. You won't notice you're progressing simply because you've learnt the most frequently used vocabulary and phrases. You watch a film, you learn 2 or 3 new words, you listen to something, it's the same. You read something, you understand almost everything. And the words/phrases you do learn are now all low-frequency vocabulary that you probably won't get that much chance to use.
I think you need to make a conscious effort to explore new areas of interest or higher level literature or something where suddenly you don't know 98% of what you're hearing or reading - just like when you began to learn the language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fairyfountain Senior Member Zimbabwe Joined 6070 days ago 254 posts - 248 votes 5 sounds | Message 6 of 13 29 March 2009 at 12:53am | IP Logged | ||
The main problem with giving yourself credit for something is that most of the time, you get a case of inflated ego and stop working, and thus never reach your goal. Honestly, people always pay you compliments, no matter how good or how bad you are, but this topic has been covered up enough already. I think that calling myself "advanced" is sufficient, and at least, I don't sound pretentious. That said, I have bad "language" days (it's like bad hair day, but in my case, it has got to do with English, and I've been experiencing a lot of those, recently). That's also why you can't think "oh yeah, I'm so totally awesome, I own them all". Achieving fluency does take years, and I called enough native speakers of several languages (including French) to notice that there's a pattern when it comes to age and fluency. Most youngsters will make mistakes in their native language, and real native fluency is often achieved a little after you turn 13 or 14. Oh, of course, a toddler is totally proficient in his native tongue - he'll just lack a lot of vocabulary. I remember asking my parents for the meaning of words after I turned 13, but that's another story. Anyway, that basically means I'm aware of the fact that I'll need at least 4-5 more years to achieve my goal. The fact of the matter is that I'm still convinced I could do something to speed up the process - after all, 7 years is a mighty long time, even if I've only been studying English seriously for a little more than 4 years. I have quite a few ideas to take my English to the next level, but I'm not sure whether repeating words over and over again would help or not. I think that having someone you can look up to (in my case, teachers and a couple of French friends who have a wider vocabulary than me) does help, but I'm not so competitive any more. I grant you that competitiveness, confidence and perfectionism are 3 qualities that are very useful when it comes to languages learning, and I wasn't blessed with all of them, but I'm lucky enough to belong to the "crazy" group who swears to anybody who's willing to listen that whatever the scientists say, having a native-like accent and native-like fluency is totally possible. Now, I also have to make a weird comment, that will probably freak you all out, but someone may relate to what I'm going to say, who knows. I recently came to the conclusion that I was somehow too attached to something that I can't define yet to give it a 100% when it comes to my English studies. I may either be afraid of losing my French identity or too lazy, or nostalgic, or a bit scared because I had some very successful language experiences but don't know how I got there or (fill in the blanks). Deep down, I may not be ready to be bilingual, and this would have nothing to do with accents, because a lot of people are bilingual and sport heavy accents but are understandable, so that's out of the question. The truth is that I'll probably stop learning languages when I'm done with English, as I have no interest whatsoever to be trilingual, and won't go out of my way to study one of the many languages I've flirted with. This is somewhat of a sad prospect, as I like English so much, so I suppose that's what I must work on. addendum: I'm still happy to get advice from you guys, and maybe one of you can help with the psychologial side of the matter. Some studies have shown that people who are cross with their countries sometimes lose their accent extremely easily when moving out of that given country, and that the social and psychological burden is what prevents adults from making progress as fast as children, and not their brain. While I'm not sure that's entirely true, I did listen to some interviews of expats, and when they had some traumatizing experience with their homeland, they tended to sound better in English, sadly enough. I also thought about the fact that once you're bilingual, nobody gives you credit for it any more. I mean, the beauty of studying a language also lies in the fact that people notice that you're making efforts to studying their language because you think it's beautiful and stuff, so you're sort of paying a tribute to their culture. This topic is definitely complicated and surely deserved to be talked about. Edited by fairyfountain on 29 March 2009 at 12:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 3e4r5t Diglot Newbie Israel Joined 5687 days ago 15 posts - 15 votes Speaks: Russian, Modern Hebrew* Studies: English | Message 7 of 13 29 March 2009 at 11:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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About the accent, I don't think that's the issue you have to be worried about. I know about many peoples here in Israel (me one of them :P) having 2 different native accents - Hebrew and Russian. I have also a quite decent accent in English that only gets better. You can't forget an accent If you use the language on the daily basis. There isn't a limited space for accents in your brain :) Edited by 3e4r5t on 29 March 2009 at 11:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dlb Triglot Groupie Joined 5721 days ago 44 posts - 52 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Greek, Italian | Message 8 of 13 30 March 2009 at 3:56pm | IP Logged | ||
This is a very real phenomenon, most common among immigrants who aren't necessarily learning the language by choice. A couple of years ago I was teaching English to a small group of women, two of whom were French, and I hit a wall of resistance when it came to making their English more "American" instead of foreign. They all spoke at an advanced level and could get their message across, but their word choices and grammar structures were often foreign. We discussed this and although they were living in the US they really didn"t want to sound too American and risk losing a part of their identity. I do understand, but with their accents they really weren't in any danger of not sounding foreign. Maybe you do want to keep some of your accent. There is certainly nothing wrong with that. Speaking of accents, how did you learn to neutralize the French accent? I find that the French accent is one of hardest to neutralize because of predictable stress patterns in French and unpredictable stress patterns in English, stress-timed vs. syllable-timed, and vowel reduction. If you are at the point where your difficulties are only Ds and Ts, congratulations. You are way ahead of the crowd. I don't know what the British do, probably depends on the accent, but as a native American speaker I most definitely use a flap for Ds and Ts that fall between vowels and glottal stops for Ts that fall at the end of a syllable. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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