My accent

Hi

Can you please give me some feedback of my accent? I have been learning english for about 5 years now.

http://www.livemocha.com/tutor/English/review/5220317

Well, it's excellent. Why can Polish people always learn English so well??!!

Thanks a lot for your opinion.

The truth is that I haven't learned any of my English in Poland. About 2 years ago I was sent by my parents to a bilingual school in Mexico, where the teachers would teach every school subject, except for Spanish, in English. Fortunately I had a few native English teachers and the rest of the Mexican ones had a very good accent. So I think I got my American English accent from them.

Then I moved to Poland and unfortunately, being a high school student myself, I can see how English is taught here.
Back then in Mexico, the teachers placed an enourmous importance on language fluency and pronunciation. We had grammar lessons too, but they weren't as important as "Oral English" classes where we used to speak American English the whole hour.
Here in Poland, English learning is mostly about the grammar and some new vocabulary. Communicative skills are left at the end of the line. Encouraging proper pronunciation and accent is non-existing.

That why me, in comparison to my peers, can't really speak or write with the most correct grammar at all times, but I have no problem at all with talking to and understanding what a native speaker of English would say to me. They do.

Very clear. But I can't tell, it seems while your vowels are elongated, students of my background (in Hong Kong, that is) tend to go to the reverse extreme of speaking choppy syllables. I think we foreigners often differ in INTONATION, much often than problems with phonemes... I suspect.

no offense, but that was BAD and if you ever talked to a real native speaker they would laugh behind your back about how funny you sound. sorry, but it annoys me how these foreign tards (not you in particular) are all like "omg english is so easy" but they don't sound anything like a real english-speaker. consider this your reality check. : /

Why should someone sound like a native speaker if the language is a foreign one for them? As long people understand you it's okay to my opinion. I oftenly hear people speaking very 'bad' Dutch, but I'm happy they're trying! The fact people laugh behind someone's back is just very childish and unsupportive.

I think Sebastian did a good job as even I could understand him :). (I have a very bad hearing)

well, he specifically asked for feedback on his ACCENT and I gave him a harsh dose of reality. it doesn't sound native in the least.

It sounded like synthesized speech to me.

>>We had grammar lessons too, but they weren't as important as "Oral English" classes where we used to speak American English the whole hour.
Here in Poland, English learning is mostly about the grammar and some new vocabulary. Communicative skills are left at the end of the line. Encouraging proper pronunciation and accent is non-existing.

In fact, after some brief browsing of books and webpages on language acquisition, I got the feeling that, while language instruction in a relaxing environment where classmates are often cooperative enough should be nice for most learners, even the communicative approach in any form (well, in practice, my German class is like this) might only work as far as filling the content - discussing topics mostly in German, correcting you anytime you make mistakes that people might misunderstand, etc. But given limited contact hours, IF PEOPLE DON'T STUDY ON THEIR OWN TOO, they might at best acquire a clear accent, NOT a native-like accent. Strictly speaking, as a non-native speaker myself, I can't tell where the OP is from, judging his accent only, but it's definitely NOT native-like, at least to the best of my knowledge. (I've listened to a few dozens of Americans on TV/other sources of audio input, and a few in person)

As a note, I'd say "grammar" is only needed at the beginner's level. For English, for example, if your instructors/textbook/whatever have gone as far as telling you how to write complex sentences, you should be almost done with grammar. The rest may be left to your good dictionary - you don't "learn" grammar anymore, you see grammar anywhere through daily exposure, and whenever you see fit, just read a dictionary. A lot of details have been outlined by Kato Lomb herself in her book. Anyway, as long as you can read any random dictionary entry without much difficulty - I mean, when you can understand most of it, though you may not know about the headword itself - you should already be done with grammar... and no more grammar study.

I'd say teaching English as it is NOT written or spoken might well be universal. China teaches the Chinese "mute English" . Hong Kong teaches me mute English too, but since we "use" English much more often than most countries, we speak more fluent broken English (oxymoron?).... and very often young girls with the notorious pseudo-American accent...

Thanks for your feedback. Now I definitely know that there's a lot of work ahead of me to sound better. But it's good to know that at least I'm understandable to others.

While it's true this recording is clearly not made by a native GAE speaker, the accent is still quite good and perfectly understandable.

Just imagine how horrible my accent would be after only 5 years of studying Polish or Spanish (or any other language). IMHO, this recording just goes to show how easy English is for foreign learners.

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Just imagine how horrible my accent would be after only 5 years of studying Polish or Spanish (or any other language). IMHO, this recording just goes to show how easy English is for foreign learners. >>


Perhaps you are stupider than the average person? I think that after 5 years of studying Polish I would speak it at a very high level and with a very good accent. And that's Polish, with Spanish I would be even better. Yes, I am a native English speaker and yes don't find accents too hard.

In other words, you don't speak for all English speakers and just because you are linguistically handicapped doesn't mean the rest are. People like you are the reason for the stereotype of the monolingual English who couldn't learn another language if his life depended on it.

angry - I wouldn't assume that you'd speak Polish to such a high standard. It's got an extremely complicated case system, and I once heard somebody say that the average age of fluency of native speakers is 16.