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Smart Accent English FAQs : Your Questions , My Answer
What is the best way to improve my pronunciation?
Many adults have the mistaken impression that the best way to learn a language is to
learn naturally, just as a child does. However, employing a child’s language learning
style is not doable. Children have infinite time to try out new language. If people do
not understand them, they simply try and try again until they get what they want.
Adults will not acquire language as readily because they are inhibited by social and
psychological constraints. Furthermore, some experts think that children are wired
for language, and that, as one grows older, it becomes biologically more difficult to
acquire a language naturally (because the brain loses the ability to make new
connections). The good thing is that adults, unlike small children, can readily deduce
and learn language rules. So any good language pronunciation course should
combine naturalistic methods (listening, guessing, trying out new things, etc.) and
rules (explanations of what to do with your mouth, explanations of how sounds
change based on their positions, etc.). Adults can and do benefit from some explicit
rule-based instruction.
Does my native language affect my accent?
Your native language does affect your accent. Often times, adults adjust English to
make it sound more like their native language. Here are some examples:
• Chinese speakers often have trouble with long words and consonant
combinations because these sound set-ups do not occur in Chinese. For
example, a Cantonese speaker may pronounceas to make the
word “easier” to pronounce.
• German does not have the sound /w/ as in, and .
Therefore, a German speaker may sayand
vant some vine?>.
Is learning how to pronounce individual sounds the most important thing I can do
to improve my accent?
Working on individual sounds is not the most important thing you can do to improve
your accent; the most important thing you can do to improve your accent is to work
on your prosody. Prosody is the larger patterns of a language, like rhythm,
tone/intonation, and pausing. Prosody varies from language to language, and in
English, prosody is used to convey emotion. For example, look at the following
situations…
“The house is on fire!”
(Run for your lives, call 911!)
“The house is on fire.”
(I am so happy; my insurance fraud
scheme is going better than I planned.)
“The house is on fire…again. Yeah I know. But please don’t bother me with such
problems. It’s 2 AM and tomorrow’s a workday!”
(My neighbor is such a bother. I wish he would stop his chemistry experiments.)
The phraseis the same in every situation, but the speed, pausing,
and tone of the words is different. That’s prosody at work. Prosody changes the way
words are perceived. Sometimes, English as a second language speakers use prosody
incorrectly, as a result, people misunderstand them. In other words, you can use correct
words with incorrect prosody and miscommunication often results. For example,
sometimes English as a second language speakers are perceived to be rushed or annoyed
(when they are not) because the English as a second language speakers use prosody
incorrectly.
Sometimes English as a second language speakers mix up sounds. Oftentimes, English
as a second language speakers will substitute a sound from their own language for a more
difficult English sound.
For example, some Chinese speakers have a propensity to mix upand sounds and
they pronounceand similarly. Other Chinese have a hard time telling the
difference betweenand . Chinese does not make a distinction between
andand and and that’s why people have trouble.
Because learners sometimes do mix up sounds, textbooks often have learners practice
sentences likeand . This sort of
practice has some use in that it helps you to initially learn to distinguish between sounds.
However, this sort of practice does not reflect real life very well. In everyday situations,
most of the time, meaning is not affected by mispronouncing one sound. Look at the
cartoon below:
Customer: One cub, please.
Server: One cub, just for you!
This is not quite what the customer had in mind!
That sort of situation would probably not happen in real life. The server would not be
confused even if the customer made a mistake and pronouncedinstead of ,
because, in real life, people use context to help them understand meaning. As you may
have guessed by now, getting each and every sound right all the time is not that important
to being understood. Nevertheless, sounds are of some importance, because if there are
too many sound mistakes, even with the help of context, the meaning can be obscured.
Do people generally overlook accents? Does the way I talk affect how people
think about me?
Research has shown that people tend to perceive speakers with accented speech as less
skilled, but thankfully, not all people are prejudiced.
Even if people have non-biased attitudes, misunderstandings may occur that cause nonnative
speakers to be misjudged and misunderstood – but not necessarily deliberately
discriminated against. As was just mentioned, sometimes non-native speakers can be
misunderstood because of their use of prosody. One particular aspect of non-native
speaker’s prosody that causes misunderstandings is intonation (tone). An example of
misunderstanding caused by tone is the US-Soviet diplomatic talks during the Cold War.
Linguists speculate that tone differences in the Russian and English languages
contributed to tensions between the two countries (though, of course, there were many
larger social, political, economical, and historical reasons for hostilities). Russians (or
their interpreters) spoke English with a Russian accent that included Russian style
sentence tones applied to English sentences. Russian style sentence tones sound hostile
and angry to English speakers. This certainly did nothing for negotiations and talks, and
more generally, contributed (along with propaganda and the history of the time) in a
small way to the West’s impression of all average Soviet people as inherently hostile.
One Example of this , when someone who works for a
head-hunting company that places Russian speaking engineers in US positions.
Occasionally, English speaking potential employers would become very agitated when
speaking to our Russian job seekers on the telephone. We had a few instances where the
English speaking would-be employers hung up on Russian job seekers because the
English speaking employers felt that the Russian-speakers were bored and inattentive.
Presuming that the Russian speaking job seekers’ ethnicity was evident from the names
on their resumes, the English speaking employers were not very biased against Russianspeakers
– after all, the potential employers did take the initiative to call in the first place.
Most likely, the problem was not one of prejudice, but rather linguistic
miscommunication.
So, can I get rid of my accent completely?
Many accent reduction programs promise that they will help you to get rid of your accent.
For most people, losing their accent completely is an unreasonable goal. Many studies
have shown that people who began to use a language after puberty (typically defined as
12-13 years old) almost always will have an accent. The reasons for this could be either
biological or psychological (or a combination). Researchers who think that the reason is
biological explain that the brain makes new connections less readily as we age.
Researchers who think that the reason is psychological explain that as people grow older
they become more inhibited and will not readily go through the process of trial and error
to learn to make new sounds.
The good news is that it is entirely possible to improve your accent enough to prevent
most miscommunications that from occur because of your speech.
How soon can I expect to see results from American accent training programs? Will it take just a few
hours for me to improve my accent?
Most people can see a noticeable difference in their speech after six months or so of
practice (try to practice a little everyday). Unfortunately, changing your accent takes a
lot of work – there is no “magic bullet” (instant cure) for accents. Improving your accent
involves not only learning rules about speech, but also practicing these rules until they
become automatic. This should not discourage you as this cycle of learning and
practicing is common to many pursuits: art, music, sports, and dance for example. In
short, improvement in most any pursuit takes a lot of practice and requires the formation
of habits and physical abilities, and accent reduction is no exception.
You should be very skeptical of any course that promises almost instant improvement in
your speech. Most often, these are scams
How much do ESL (English as a Second Language) teachers know about
pronunciation?
Most English teachers know very little about accent and pronunciation. Although this is
starting to change, most teacher training focuses around grammar and writing; very little
attention is given specifically to pronunciation.
In many countries, some English teachers do not have very good oral English themselves,
so their students do not acquire very good pronunciation.
If you are looking for a professional to help you with your accent, you should look for
some one with a background in speech pathology, linguistics and/or phonetics and
phonology as well as ESL.
What about speech recognition? Could I use it to improve my accent?
Reliable speech recognition for second language learning software is something that still
has not been developed by any company with which I am familiar. I have seen a few
attempts at using speech recognition, but they all function rather unreliably.
Smart Accent English is working to research and implement quality speech recognition within our programs.
Will improving my pronunciation have additional benefits?
Most people do find that improving pronunciation helps improve comprehension ability.
Part of pronunciation training involves learning to distinguish different sounds, which can
help you hear words and phrases more clearly. Another part of pronunciation training is
learning to distinguish tones, and this can help you understand the mood of what is being
said.
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