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In this case, "the girls" is fine.
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Damian
Bullying may actually be a very good way for them to learn the language, and trying to completely shield yourself from it would be bad for you in the long run, if your goal is to become natively fluent in the language.
Also, I imagine bullying of someone with a foreign accent would be more likely if you went to a homogeneous country like Poland (where they're more apt to want people to be the same as them) than a rather hetergeneous one like Britain.
Michael,
If you want to sound natively fluent, stay away from the people who tell you you sound fine, when in reality you still sound like a honking foreigner. Of course, if that is not your goal, then you may want to throw yourself in with those people. It's up to you. Just don't let others go around setting your goals for you.
If you want to sound natively fluent, you should throw yourself in with the bullies, befriend them, and let them give you harsh, biting feedback as to how you speak. Trust me, this kind of feedback will be much more effective than the feedback you get from a teacher politely correcting you. Let them beat you up and steal your lunch money for speaking funny. (OK, maybe not that last part.)
Let the clique of native speakers "haze" you in. After all embarassment (or humiliation) may be one of the best ways to learn a language.
http://www.zompist.com/whylang.html
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Thanks. I never got bullied in my life, everybody likes me iin my school, and I get the feeling that people are too polite to point out those mistakes to me, thats why i have to look for them myself. And i dont really want to be humiliated :D speaking outloud is sucha humiliation for me already. Imagine watching a video on my geograpgy lesson about Bangladesh. Theres a guy speaking in English and everyone is laughing their heads off at the way he speaks. Now, how am I supposed to speak when my pronounciation isn't so much different from that guy's?
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Beneficii, are you out of your lovin' mind?
That's got to be the worst advice I've ever seen.
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beneficii Fri Dec 14, 2007 7:23 pm GMT:
<<Bullying may actually be a very good way for them to learn the language, and trying to completely shield yourself from it would be bad for you in the long run, if your goal is to become natively fluent in the language.>>
Bullying is a crime! I suffered on these a large part of my schooldays and many years after leaving school. It can destroy your family and your life, especially if your parents don't know about theses phenomena and blame you on wrong behaviour instead. They didn't know what happended, they didn't really ask me about what had happened. They couldn't deal with the situation, and I couldn't either, for many reasons. You probably don't know what your're talking about, beneficii. (And if you know, you should change your nickname.) Bullying is child abuse!
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I agree with guest2. I thought that I didn't understand Beneficii's message properly but being in favour of bullying is nasty.
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Michael,
Of course, you should make sure those bullies in the end want you to be a part of that group, rather than apart from it, but I think in your case, where you want to become fluent and you're unable to reenact a silent period, throwing your lot in with people who will just politely nod and smile at everything you say or who think you're fine just the way you speak (when you believe clearly you're not), because you will never change and keep falling back on your own speaking habits.
Do you know why? It's because those speaking habits, as much as you don't want to sound foreign, work for you. People can understand you, so that is enough for most people. As you get older, fewer and fewer of your peers will get on you for the way you speak, provided they can understand you. I suspect this may be one of the main reasons why adults speak with honking accents (of course your accent is not honking if you don't have a problem with it), even while they're thinking internally they're doing just fine, by the feedback they're getting from their peers.
Of course, if you're fine with your accent and are understandable, then you would do well to avoid bullies. But if you're not, depending on the level of cruelness, you may want to throw your lot in them. Even more effective would be to throw your lot in with small children, who are the nastiest of the bunch when it comes to people with accents, and they will imitate you to no end (which is pretty good feedback, don't you think?--it probably is even better than playing back recordings of yourself) until you change.
If you have a change to encounter and engage in regular conversations with such children, do not shut yourself from them, do not put a wall between yourself and them, as much as you want the immediate pain to end, come in and play along with them, as they would do far more for your language learning than a bunch of condescending adults who will politely nod and smile.
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Anytime something scares you or makes you shy away from it, it's a sign that you need to confront it and conquer it. Fear of speaking a different language infront of people more experienced in it than you is natural. Fear of being different is natural. And everyone experiences it in once situation or another. You won't get any better at English or any more confident if you let that fear master you and keep you from practicing out loud, making friends, or feeling good about yourself.
Yes, you should encourage people to be honest with you when you make mistakes and point them out to you so you can correct them. You will probably have to ask them to do this for you point-blank, so that they won't feel bossy or hypercritical, because it is usually bad manners to constantly criticize how someone talks, and most people will be uncomfortable doing it. But a good friend will help you out. (So you need to go out and make some friends!)
Also, be sure that you are not blaming your insecurity about your accent for everything else that you are insecure about (and 15 is a terribly insecure age anyway!). I work at a hospital with lots of Mexicans who speak anywhere from zero English to perfectly conversational English. They range from janitors to doctors, and I've noticed that their actual command of the language isn't always a true correlation to how socially successful they are. I know one guy who is painfully shy and makes no attempt to engage any English-speakers in conversation, but when pressed, his English is better than you would think. He just won't use it. His predecessor spoke no English at all, but was always friendly and outgoing with a hug and a greeting for everyone -- he didn't care if you couldn't yak with him. Others may speak with heavy accents and have to fumble for the occasional word and muddle their grammar, but they still make small talk and enjoy a good relationship with everyone around them. Sure, it helps that lots of the Americans here are bilingual, but you can always tell that the people who stick most strictly to their own language peers seem the least happy.
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Here is a description by someone who aimed to speak natively fluent Japanese of a situation where he got made fun of for speaking with an accent or speaking it wrong, and she brutally criticized him for talking funny, and he mentions how he thought it helped him:
http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/shaping-what-the-immersion-environment-does-for-you#comment-2657
Also, another author (who I don't agree with in terms of early output and the exact methods by which you learn) mentions how "hazing" by their peers is one advantage children have over adults when it comes to language learning:
"Their [children's] peers are nastier [than adults' peers]. Embarrassment is a prime motivating factor for human beings (I owe this insight to Marvin Minsky's The Society of Mind, but it was most memorably expressed by David Berlinski (in Black Mischief, p. 129), who noted that of all emotions, from rage to depression to first love, only embarrassment can recur, decades later, with its full original intensity). Dealing with a French waiter is nothing compared with the vicious reception in store for a child who speaks funny" (statements in brackets my own).
"I've spoken of kids' brutality toward kids who speak funny as an incentive; but this one doesn't work as well for adults. Maybe this is biological-- as Marvin Minsky suggests, nature wants offspring to imitate their parents, not vice versa-- or maybe it's just that adults are better at avoiding hazing. When it comes to language learning, however, this means that many adults are terrified of saying something wrong, and just say nothing at all. Needless to say you don't advance very far this way."
Of course, I agree with Antimoon's owners over this person, and some of the last statement I disagree with, in that making mistakes (which I think is more of inventing new forms on the spot while speaking or writing, because you don't know what the heck it is suppose to be, or pronouncing words incorrectly) is to be avoided, though not quite with terror. (One thing I notice about the Antimoon forum is that very few people here are willing or able to defend Antimoon's owners, not even the owners themselves it seems.) Still, for those forced to live in the country, and those who already have had a lot of input and are producing output, it seems that the above situation would apply in that it would help them perfect their perfection of the language.
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Perhaps our definition of bullying is different; that's the only way I can give you the benefit of a doubt on your advice.
However, if you're referring to the same kind of bullying that we are, bullying, while it might improve somebody's English, might also bear scars--both emotional and physical--that last a lifetime.
I've read some treatises on the effects of bullying. The ones who do survive it are permanently scarred. The ones who don't, go "postal". One English girl, bullied mercilessly over her weight, committed suicide in one high-profile case. The shooters at Columbine were bullied, as was the poor Chinese-American immigrant at Virginia Tech, who shot a number of people before he turned the gun on himself. Therefore, to suggest bullying as a way of improving English skills seems highly irresponsible to me at best. Have you ever gleaned the possibility that these victims could come to grave physical injury?
Now, if you're referring to peer pressure in general, as opposed to bullying, might be useful in improving English. I hope this is what you're referring to.
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Bullying is not a way. I thought I could just find a way in which it would be easier rather than "just do it and embarass yourself for life"..
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Michael - don't over dramatise all this! There is nothing at all wrong with your Polish accent, and you should not beat yourself up trying to mimic any kind of British accent. Simply do your best to speak English as well as you can and if you make loads of mistakes on the way so what? Learn from them and try not to repeat them, that's all you can do.
I think the many Polish people over here who speak nigh on perfect English in their distinct Polish acent sound really cool.
Why not seek advice on the special forums on the internet for Polish people living and working in the UK? You can share your thought with them. Just google something like "Polish Forums UK".
It's more or less certain that you will pick up all the terms and expressions in colloquial English, as well as any regionalisms. Just go with the flow. You haven't told us whereabouts in England you are, not that that matters. Wherever you are you will begin to acquire something of the local accent - the younger you are the more likely that will happen. After two and a half years on Albion's Isle - aged 13 to 15 plus so you say - I'm surprised it hasn't happened before now.
Just don't tune into the phone-ins on TalkSport radio, especially when it's Jon Gaunt's program! :-)
Just have some sympathy with the newly installed manager of the England Football team - the Italian guy Fabio Capello! It's been his life's dream apparently to manage the English side and now he has achieved his ambition.
Just one major problem - he has to control all the guys and communicate with them on a very serious level as well as on the personal in order to make them eventual winners, but the only words of English he can understand you can count on one hand. In his public interview in the UK media today formalising his appointment all he could manage to say was something like "I am very happy!" or something like that, and the rest of his speech had to be done through an interpreter. I can see the English guys are going to have a whole lot of fun as I don't think any of them can converse in Italian.
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Missed my handle - the above "Guest" was me
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Michael and Damian,
Michael, people like Damian (sorry Damian!) are the devil if your goal is to drop your Polish accent. Of course, I mean this in the best possible way, as I don't want to say that Damian is a bad person. In fact, if you don't mind maintaining your Polish accent, people like Damian are not so bad after all.
It's just that having a person smiling and nodding your head and saying it's all fine, when you know it isn't because of your goal, just does not do a person well and you cannot forget your goal.
So, decide for yourself, do you consider speaking English in a Polish accent to be bad for you and a state desirable of change, or do you think it's not so bad? It's largely up to you, and your decisions regarding it should go toward your goal. Others should respect your decision either way.
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Jasper,
http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/shaping-what-the-immersion-environment-does-for-you#comment-2657 (the part with the Japanese-born Korean friend)
http://www.zompist.com/whylang.html (the part about embarassment and humiliation)
The _bullying_ mentioned in the 2 above links is the kind I'm talking about.
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