|
 |
Memorizing key to native like accent? | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| maxb Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6971 days ago 536 posts - 589 votes  7 sounds Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 1 of 27 10 August 2007 at 2:09am | IP Logged | ||
|
Just want to share a thought that I have had. It seems that a common denominator among people who have learned a second language to almost native level is that they have spent some time memorizing things in the language. With this I mean that they have taken for instance a long piece of dialouge and learnt it by heart. Both in terms of contents as well as in terms of pronunciation and intonation.
I can give two examples: 1. Jerry Dai. A chinese who immigrated to canada and now speaks english with a near native or native american (or maybe canadian) accent. He started his learning by memorizing the first lesson of a course called "Family album USA". According to himself he spent 6 months memorizing this 6 minute dialog. 2. Da Shan (Mark Rowswell). The well known (in China at least :-) ) canadian who became the first western xiangsheng performer and who speaks mandarin like a native. He has obviously spent a lot of time memorizing xiang sheng dialouges, tongue twisters and other things. I have also spent some time doing things like this and I must say that it is really useful. The thing is that some western learners (especially swedish ones) seem to think that memorizing is somehow bad. That you should be creative with the language instead. Well I think it is better to do some hard memorizing in the beginning so that you can be creative with the language later on. It is just like when improvising Jazz. Most successful jazz musicians have spent a lot of time memorizing jazz solos of the great musicians before them. Only having done this could they start being creative and forming their own style. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| audiolang Diglot Senior Member Romania Joined 6108 days ago 108 posts - 109 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Romanian*, English | Message 2 of 27 10 August 2007 at 2:36am | IP Logged | ||
|
I'm one of those european learners who don't like memorizing especially when I don't master words good enough.You'd have to be at least in the intermediate phase to do that.To put it simply, it's not necessary at all.
Reasons: We all have our speaking styles ,that's why we don't have to imitate other people. Even with speeches,it's enough to remember the basic ideas and how you expand on them. Finally,no one will be interested to hear your dialogue recital ,but when you can play something from Chopin(I'm not familiar with Jazz)a lot of people would be happy to listen. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6258 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 3 of 27 10 August 2007 at 3:20am | IP Logged | ||
|
I can't memorize worth anything, yet I feel very comfortable speaking English, French or Esperanto next to my native language and people tell me my accent is quite good (also my Chinese accent, but my Chinese is far from fluent). I believe the key for me was to have a lot of exposure to the spoken language, to learn to read and write IPA and never to look at German-like transcriptions of a language's pronunciation.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| maxb Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6971 days ago 536 posts - 589 votes 7 sounds Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 4 of 27 10 August 2007 at 6:09am | IP Logged | ||
But you get your speaking style from imitating someone. We have all gotten our native accents by imitating someone (most likely our parents). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| audiolang Diglot Senior Member Romania Joined 6108 days ago 108 posts - 109 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Romanian*, English | Message 5 of 27 10 August 2007 at 6:23am | IP Logged | ||
|
Ok, I thought you meant vocabulary and the way we use grammar.In that case,I don't even know whom I did imitate,from watching so many cartoons and movies,I suppose they all had a small influence on me.
I can't wait to see how my French will sound like. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6174 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes Speaks: Latin* | Message 6 of 27 10 August 2007 at 8:34am | IP Logged | ||
|
I'm all in favour of learning whole dialogues by heart at the initial stages: this provides masses of instantly useful chunks that are:
- absolutely grammatically correct (as opposed to self-constructed phrases of those learners that rely on the Rules too much); - rich in modern-day expressive vocabulary; - excellent patterns for constructing new sentences through substitution; - etc. It is suprising how many topics can be covered by carefully remixing a sufficiently diverse set of very short dialogues. ChinesePod is an excellent example of such material. I have applied this method very often in the process of my own self-development (for I dislike the word 'studies') and the results have been consistently high. At the same time, this deals with the issue of memorising correct inflections (which has been mentioned in the parallel thread): if anyone asks me to put together a table of inflections in any inflected language that I know, I would only be able to do so by recalling the examples of usage and distilling the rules from those, the way one would do for one's native tongue. Doing it any other way is a horrendous waste of effort and memory resources, in my opinion. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| winters Trilingual Heptaglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6832 days ago 199 posts - 218 votes Speaks: Croatian*, Serbian*, Russian*, English, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Greek, French, Hungarian | Message 7 of 27 10 August 2007 at 9:21am | IP Logged | ||
|
The only thing I ever memorise are pieces of literature - such as poems or shorter prose excerpts - and given that I pass onto literature rather soon after having started a language (even if I am not that well-versed in the language yet, nor have, in most cases, 'finished' the grammar at the point where I already begin with literature) and use it as my primary sources (literature in itself is the main reason why I study languages at all), it still means that I memorise a lot, and begin to memorise relatively soon. I also recite things I have memorised a lot, thus improving the accent.
I do believe that memorisation can do wonders for you, however, I cannot imagine myself memorising things such as dialogues from textbooks. It is hard to put into words why, but I absolutely refuse to memorise, and as such to carry inside of myself, something of absolutely no emotional or artistic value for me - and the dialogues you mention are precisely that. So, poetry, prose excerpts, even folk art, all of that can pass, but dialogues from language learning textbooks - no. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Farley Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6880 days ago 681 posts - 739 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, GermanB1, French Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 27 10 August 2007 at 9:32am | IP Logged | ||
You might find this site GIML of interest. It is about how to teach music by aural association and how to learn improvision. The music learning theory is based on a concept called Audiation. There are many similarities between music learning theory and language learning theory, see the Methodology section for comparisons. Learning rote songs is the foundation of learning, but it also included pattern drills, see the classroom section. There is also an aptitude section about teaching to individual differences. Edited by Farley on 10 August 2007 at 9:35am 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
