when could i speak english as native as englishmen????? and how?

same to the subject

Colin,

Speaking as an American, I can say that you have to grow up in British society to speak English with a British accent. Even closer to home, Americans from the northern and western United Statesd tend to do a poor job imitating speakers from the southern United States. Here, also, you really have to grow up in a Southern society in order to sound genuinely Southern.

hi,Brennus
nice to meet you,and i appreciate your answer so much, thanx again
by the way, are you a american gay?
a
ctually ,i am a chinese. like all other chinese students, i spend quite a lot time learning english. i could talk with most people now, the problem is it seems like my accent still differs from native speakers.

i know it is hard to fix this problem.because i dont grow up in western socity. But i am trying.

everybody,any suggestion?

thanx , have a good day

hi colin I think you have to consider to improve your spelling and grammar first before worrying about accent and fluency.
just my two cents........

Thanks Colin but watch it with this one - gay - should be - guy. Just as speaking with the right tone makes all the difference in Chinese, spelling makes a difference in English.

Your accent will become perfected with time even though I realize that some of the sounds of western languages are hard for Chinese people to pronounce. For example, Chinese students I knew in college had trouble with the -br- sound, pronouncing it as -r-.

Haha! Who knows? Maybe he was trying to ask you if you were an American gay, with an "a".

Why make a fuss about accents? Just relax! It's perfectly ok, if a Chinese person speaks English with a Chinese accent, German person with a German accent etc. Just like American native speaker speaks with American accent, Scottish speaker - with the Scottish accent, Australian - with an Australian accent, etc. Accents are fine, as long as they do not impede mutual understanding.

Karthi,

I am sure he did NOT mean that. This is not that sort of forum... :)))

I'm a Canadian gay.

...

Now, accent, in my view, and this is not the first time I'm stating it, need not be native-like, as long as it's easily intelligible.

However, it is essential to get your grammar and usage right.

I agree that you don't have to have a "perfect" native-like accent, but getting close does have some benefits:
- having a "bad" accent is one of the main reasons why many people don't like speaking in foreign languages, no matter how good they are at writing, grammer, listening comprehension etc.
- people who don't like their own accent sometimes try to cover that by speaking faster thus making it even harder for other people to understand
- Better pronunciation makes it easier to speak fluently and with less gramatical mistakes because you don't have to pay constant attention to pronunciation
- People and their language skills are often criticized by their accents, especially politicians, businessmen, celebrities, people in the travelling business
- when listeners attention isn't focused on "what was that word he just said?" they can start listening to what you actually are saying
- less misunderstandings
- knowing the sounds of the language and how to produce them actually helps a lot when it comes to listening comprehension
- Many teachers totally neglect the teaching of pronunciation, so the student has to find some other place to get the information, like this forum
- If no information is given on accents and pronunciation, the student is likely to keep using the sounds of his mother tongue. Like Vytenis said, this is okay as long as it doesn't impede mutual understanding, but unfortunately this is often the case if the sound systems aren't closely ralated. (note that the people you are most likely to hear speaking in foreign languages are often the ones who have required a somewhat better pronunciation skills than their fellow students, and are therefore less scared about speaking in foreign languages and also more likely to go to foreign countries to study or have careers that require language skills.)
- If you are an imigrant, being able to pronounce the words correctly and to sound more native-like can reduce discrimination and racism and you are more likely to get a job other than just cleaning.
etc.

Examples from real life: At disneyland Paris I could understand more when the guides and sales people spoke French than I did when they spoke English though I know only about 40 words in French.
Many people I know pronounce the English vowels in pizza(a), fun and hard alike, and /I/ and /i/ the same except that the latter is longer, the same with /U/ and /u/ etc. This means that they often can't place the stress on proper syllabels either and this can cause to misunderstandings.

However: I do think that knowing the grammer and vocabulary are more essential in language learning, but that pronunciation shouldn't be neglected as it often is.