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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 25 of 49 27 May 2011 at 7:39pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm quite familiar with the work of Dr. Olle Kjellin and use some of his techniques. Here is a reference to one of his articles: http://olle-kjellin.com/SpeechDoctor/ProcLP98.html I'll call your attention to the last paragraphs of the above article. "Taken together, this may be regarded as a mode of acquisition quite similar to that of a first language with adaptation to the adult's mental and physical assets and constraints, and the results for a motivated learner can be almost as good as in L1 acquisition. The major remaining problem for the adult will be a lexical handicap due to the late start in life, to which there is no known remedy. Apart from that, learning a language is simply child’s play! Last-minute addendum: In a recent article, Bongaerts [1999] incidentally seems to support directly and completely the claims made here. He concludes by suggesting "that the success of the exceptional adult learners we identified may have been at least partly due to the combination of three factors: high motivation, continued access to massive L2 input, and intensive training in the perception and production of L2 speech sounds."" I would hardly claim that Dr Kjellin is saying that any adult can achieve easily native-like pronunciation. I certainly would agree that "intensive training in the perception and production of L2 sound" plus everything else will produce good results. But that is the whole point. What is seemingly effortless for children becomes quite difficult for adults. Again, as I have always said, it's not impossible to achieve a native-like accent starting at an adult stage. It just becomes very hard and that is the reason why most adult language learners never attain that level. I see an analogy with learning to play a musical instrument. You can learn to play at any age and become quite good. However,I do believe that it's best to start at the earliest possible age if you want to become a professional musician. There is a big difference between starting at 5 and at 25 and this will be seen 10 years later. Now, I know that somebody will probably say that an acquaintance of theirs took up the violin at 50 and now plays very well. Congratulations, but I'm sure that that same person wishes they had started at age 5. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Faraday Senior Member United States Joined 6118 days ago 129 posts - 256 votes Speaks: German* | Message 26 of 49 27 May 2011 at 8:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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I direct your attention to your first post in this thread:
"Past the age of puberty, it becomes very difficult to acquire native-like pronunciation in foreign languages." I know from first-hand experience, both improving my own accent and helping others improve theirs, that the task is nowhere near "very difficult." I don't care about proving you wrong; I just don't want others to read threads like this and walk away convinced that it requires a herculean effort, or can't be done at all. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 27 of 49 27 May 2011 at 8:57pm | IP Logged | ||
Well I guess the issue seems to be how do we define difficult and very difficult. I won't attempt that herculean task. Let me instead say that it's very rare to find adult learners with native-like accents. Now, we can quibble over rare and very rare, but here we can go by observations. I simply look around me and on the internet. Can one say that native-like pronunciation is quite common? As I asked earlier, how many polyglots sound like natives in their various languages? Where I live it is not that rare to find perfectly bilingual individuals. But, and this is the big but, how did they become perfectly bilingual? Certainly not by starting at the age of 16 or 26 or 36. As for those who start their L2 at these late ages, some become very good and, in some cases, native-like but with work (I won't say how much to avoid argument). At the same time, I recognize that many actors are able to imitate accents for their various roles. It's part of their training. I think of Australian actors who are able to do American accents. But when you listen to them in interviews, what do they sound like? Edited by s_allard on 27 May 2011 at 8:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Faraday Senior Member United States Joined 6118 days ago 129 posts - 256 votes Speaks: German* | Message 28 of 49 27 May 2011 at 9:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with you that, relatively speaking, very few people have achieved near-native accent as adults. That,
however, doesn't mean that others couldn't do so given the right techniques. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 29 of 49 27 May 2011 at 9:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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Since I come across as the sort of party-pooping bogey-man here, I would just like to emphasize that I do think that adults can achieve excellent L2 results and even native-like phonology. I know that I have said this before: the question is how. When I look at mastery of English across the world, especially spoken English, it really boils down to massive exposure to and interaction with the language, high motivation for some reason (love, sex, work, grades in school, money, hobby, travel, etc.) and a concentrated effort on phonetics. Put it all together and you'll get good results.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 30 of 49 27 May 2011 at 9:13pm | IP Logged | ||
Care to elaborate on how this task is not difficult? Considering the percentage of people who achieve it past the onset of adulthood, we are forced to conclude that it's no where near easy, at least for the very vast majority of learners. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 31 of 49 27 May 2011 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | ||
Is it only a matter of technique, in your opinion? Can it be the case that some people would, without the proper techniques, fail, but otherwise succeed with the proper techniques? Are there not others who succeed without a give technique? Are there not other who seek the proper techniques and still fail? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Faraday Senior Member United States Joined 6118 days ago 129 posts - 256 votes Speaks: German* | Message 32 of 49 27 May 2011 at 9:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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"Care to elaborate on how this task is not difficult?"
I'm not sure that I can improve on what has already been said on the subject by Olle Kjellin. To address your other question, I'm not maintaining autistically that technique is the only thing that matters. They aren't useful if unused. And it does take some people longer to achieve the same result than others. Difficult is not a word I'd use to describe the process, however. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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