English learners view of "clear" English.

Pete from Peru   Sat Mar 13, 2010 5:39 pm GMT
For years, I've been overlooking signs that showed a really big problem most English learners have. A problem which prevents us from improving our English and take it to a native-like level. I'll show you three situations that illustrate this problem quite well.

1.- An English teacher I had, he is Peruvian and studied English here, Despite speaking English well and having a good knowledge of vocabulary and grammar, he once said that Italians have a very "clear" English. And I thought to myself "WTF? Strong Italian accents are really bad..."

2.-I was giving some information to tourists of different nationalities. I was speaking both in English and Spanish. After a couple of minutes a Spanish couple said "You seem to speak very good English". I said "thank you, do you speak English as well?" And they replied (in Spanish) "Not really, we only know the basics. But we can't understand what you say, so it must be good becaus we can only understand English when spoken by someone with a Spanish accent."

3.- English students complaining that they didn't understand their English teacher (from Oxford, England) because he pronounced things different. For example, he pronounced "mother" something like "mothah". And I began to suspect they were expecting something more like "mahderr"

4.- Counters from a travel agencie telling me about two girls I was going to take on a tour. One was from India, the other was British of Chinese descent, both girls living in England now. The counters said they understand the girl from India very well because her English was "quite clear". But, on the other hand, they were sort of frustrated because they couldn't understand the other girl because she had a "Chinese" accent.
When I had the chance to talk to the tourists. I noticed the Indian girl still had a little bit of an accent, with some strong vowels and occasional rolled "r". The other girl however had no Chinese accent at all. She didn't sound English, but she definitely spoke good English, her accent being a hybrid between General American and RP.


Have you noticed this? or is it that I'm going crazy?!!!

Kind Regards
Pete from Peru   Sat Mar 13, 2010 6:16 pm GMT
Sorry, lots of mistakes there. In 4, by "counter" I mean ladies that work in a Travel Agent's and give information and sell tour packages to tourists. I guess I used the word completely wrong there.

Well I'd like to expose this more directly then:

Why do English learners consider bad English as "clear" English, and good or native-like English as bad or difficult to understand?

It was giving me a lot of frustration when I gave lessons and my students sometimes complained that I sometimes spoke too fast or that I connect words and they can't understand.

One day it occured to me to pay more attention to the things I noticed they had difficulties with. And I discovered this while doing a dictation:

I said: I lifted it up OR that gave us some time OR They're working with us
And they understood: I leave to the tap AND that gave a some time. AND There working ----- (didn't get the last part)

I found that when we were correcting the dictations together and I said what the correct word was, they often went "Ahhhhh" and repeated the word, but their own version of the word, and so I had to correct them.

It was also quite difficult for them to understand sentences containing words that were mostly linked together (Connected speech).

When I realised this I decided it was necessary to teach them phonetics and the basics of English phonology. Of course I never get into too much detail but I explain things I consider necessary , for example, connected speech, voiced and voiceless consonant sounds and the way they work together, weak pronunciations, English intonation, etc.

After about three months of incorporating that into my lessons, they've made some noticeable progress. Even though they still make some mistakes, when I start to explain they see the logic behind it immediately and next time they try do it properly.

So my questions to you are:

1.- What do you think makes English learners view bad English as "clear"?
2.- Do you think the fact of being aware of the dynamics of spoken English (as I call it) isn't important enough?
3.- Why do most methods practically ignore this knowledge I consider to be vital to enhance your aural comprehenssion?
4.- If a person never learns anything about the phonology of English, will they be able to really achieve a native-like level of English?
5.- I agree with Antimoon point of teaching the basics of phonetics and pronunciation at the very beginning. But how can you do that and keep the student interested in learning? Have you ever done it? Have you ever seen it done?

I'm thinking of making an experimental class with a different approach and I'd like some advice.

Thanks very much in advance

Regards
agit   Sat Mar 13, 2010 10:28 pm GMT
<<1.- What do you think makes English learners view bad English as "clear"? >>


Because they can understand it. For a Spanish learner of English, an Italian accent in English must sound similar to a Spanish accent, so they can understand it almost as well as they can understand a Spanish accent (which they're are used to hearing in their classes and so on).

Also, they are used to hearing the kind of language as spoken on those tapes. Those "hello, what is your name? My name is Sarah, you? I am John, pleased to meet you" dialogues where everyone speaks very clearly. They try to imitate these voices and come to the conclusion that this is "good" English. They also listen to a lot of news reports and things like that. They never hear "real" English, or at least if they do they're not expected to understand it.

Also, what is a learner supposed to imitate? Obviously, a clear accent. A learner MUST start from a clear, artificial accent and slowly pick up a realistic accent at the advanced stage. You CANNOT start with a realistic accent without first having a clear, artificial one. I have seen people attempt this and the results are disastrous, they just have no idea what they're doing.


<<3.- Why do most methods practically ignore this knowledge I consider to be vital to enhance your aural comprehenssion? >>


Because it's boring and too abstract for the lesser minded. And they expect you to just kind of pick it up.



<<,4.- If a person never learns anything about the phonology of English, will they be able to really achieve a native-like level of English? >>


It can't hurt, that's for sure.


<<But how can you do that and keep the student interested in learning? Have you ever done it? Have you ever seen it done? >>


You can't. That's why they don't do it.
Another Guest   Sun Mar 14, 2010 2:10 am GMT
I'm curious about your students hearing "leave to" when you say "lifted". Are your students native Spanish speakers? Because I've noticed Spanish speakers pronouncing the vowel in "lift" as the vowel in "leave", but not much of the other way around.

Since native learners learn English without formal instruction in phonology, I suppose it's theoretically possible for a non-native learner to do so as well. I don't think that phonology necessarily has to be boring. In Spanish class, we talked about differences between English and Spanish phonology, such as that the difference between b and v isn't as well defined in Spanish, and I found it interesting.
Guest2   Sun Mar 14, 2010 5:15 am GMT
"One day it occured to me to pay more attention to the things I noticed they had difficulties with."

Wow. That was genius. How could anyone ever think of something like this?
Uriel   Sun Mar 14, 2010 8:44 pm GMT
Pete, my boyfriend gave me some CDs he was using to learn English from to resurface, and I was amused to find that the male speaker on them was fluent in Spanish but not a native speaker -- he had a heavy American accent that contrasted markedly with the female speaker on the CD. (Who conversely had a heavy hispanic accent when speaking English, so I guess fair is fair. But, dude, they could have hired a couple of chicanos and gotten the best of both worlds!)

I was also amused to find that even though the male speaker had a terribly annoying voice, I could understand him with great ease -- because I also have an American accent. It sounded far "clearer" to me. Native accents require far more concentration for me to get through. Even though that's really what I would need to be able to understand in the end, it occurred to me that it might actually be helpful to use the American guy to build my comprehension while I'm concentrating on learning the nuts and bolts of verb tenses and convoluted grammar, because I'm not fighting both battles of grammar and pronunciation at once!
Pete from Peru   Sun Mar 14, 2010 11:50 pm GMT
Hello everybody, thank you for your answers.

To agit:

I see. All that makes sense. Now that I think about, I started with an artificial accent as well. And I picked up natural English later on. But I was aware of certain things native speakers do when they speak that enabled me to understand them with less difficulty. I have to say that I learnt a lot here as well, especially about regional accents in America and Britain. However I didn't adopt those traits at the very beginning.

I still think it's very useful to know what really happens when native speakers speak and to have an idea of why it happens is also helpful. That will change your expectations about the language and even though you can't or you don't use those features yourself, it helps you be more prepared to understand spoken English because you know what is really coming out of native speakers mouths. When you know nothing, your expectations of what you might hear in spoken English are often wrong or far from reality and it's really frustrating for most students not to know why the h*** they can't understand something as easy as "...a bit of lemon in it, please."

To Another Guest:

Yeah, man. My students are native Spanish speakers. All of them are Peruvian. And you're right they tend to mistake those words often. Either way actually. That happens because they pronounce pairs like "leave" and "live", "beat" and "bit","it and "eat" with the same sound. Wich is neither /I/ nor /i:/ but normally our Spanish "i" wich is something like the sound in "happy".

I agree with you that it doesn't have to be boring. The first time I introduce this kind of thing, I explain for them that it's something that happens in all living languages in the world and then show them some of the things that happens in Spanish such as: final "S" realization, elision in Spanish, "yeismo", etc. And then I explain how these things affect their accent in a way that may make it difficult to understand. And then I move on to English phonology giving bits of information everytime. I explain how things work first and then we practise it for about 10 to 15 minutes until they can do it correctly and at least notice certain subtleties they didn't catch before.

To Guest2:

I know it sounds a bit awkward. But what I meant is really pay attention to difficulties they have bacause they're native Spanish speakers. Not only correcting words individually when they say something copletely unintelligible, but to pick up and correct subtle things that will make their accent sound less "Spanish" and also understand spoken English better as a result.

For example:

The guy in the dubbed version of the program "Ultimate Guinness world records" pronounces that something like "ultimay Guinness worrrrecors" And some students pronounce it like that as well and hence expect to hear that when they don't know about connected speech or when nobody corrects the mistakes that make their accent sound so strong.

To Uriel:

OK, I see. But don't you think you might be getting used to listening to a bad accent which may in the end be harmful to your comprehension of spoken Spanish. I mean when you are confronted with real native speakers, you'll find that it's nothing like the Spanish in those CDs and may feel frustrated because you don't understand.

I think the chances of that hapenning are high. I know lots of people who tried to learn English with such material and the result is: Someone who can more or less understand written language but struggles a lot when trying to speak themselves and can barely understand native speakers.

To Everyone who might read:

Don't you think the ultimate goal of learning a foreing language is to have a good command of it, to have a good accent and to be able to understand written and spoken language in most situations?
Uriel   Mon Mar 15, 2010 4:07 am GMT
<<But don't you think you might be getting used to listening to a bad accent which may in the end be harmful to your comprehension of spoken Spanish. I mean when you are confronted with real native speakers, you'll find that it's nothing like the Spanish in those CDs and may feel frustrated because you don't understand.>>

True. I live in New Mexico and I have a Mexican boyfriend -- no shortage of native Spanish speakers for me to listen to, fortunately. Trying to remember all those conjugations and when to say what is my main problem, because I'm not learning Spanish in a class -- I'm trying to have ordinary conversations about life, the universe, and everything while having to think on my feet and translate my thoughts into something vaguely understandable to a native speaker, with limited vocabulary and the painful awareness that once you get past simple declarative sentences, Spanish and English grammars diverge significantly. In my spare time, I try to study up the finer points on the internet and from a few books. Right now, perfect pronunciation is one of the least of my concerns! I mean someday I would like mine to be better, but right now I'm just concentrating on getting the right words out! It's very much a work in progress, I'm afraid.
Clarke   Mon Mar 15, 2010 11:53 pm GMT
< Don't you think the ultimate goal of learning a foreing language is to have a good command of it, to have a good accent and to be able to understand written and spoken language in most situations? >

It might be your goal to learn a language only to read; or only to understand and speak; or only to understand in certain situations.

A "good command" of it wouldn't matter in the first of these; a "good accent" wouldn't be necessary in the first and third, and probably not in the second; understanding the written form wouldn't matter in the second; "most situations" wouldn't matter in the third.
Uriel   Tue Mar 16, 2010 12:13 am GMT
Well, I can tell you from experience that learning to read and write a language and learning to speak and listen to it are two different animals entirely. Learning to think in it must be different still.
EnUS Student   Tue Mar 16, 2010 4:21 pm GMT
Poor dedication to the language is another problem. Doing your homework and listening to those standard audio cassettes will never bring you to a decent level. What has helped (and helps) me a lot is the internet. Read articles, Wikipedia to learn new words. Watch movies, but especially YouTube videos (where "real" english is ubiquitous) to get acquainted with the pronunciation. That's what you should try to achieve, though I know it's probably hard. Make them translate some online article (maybe even make an exam out of it), let them watch some english movies once in a while. Get them acquainted with british and american accents too, it may make learning easier for some (as did enUS for me).
Clarke   Tue Mar 16, 2010 9:23 pm GMT
<Wikipedia to learn new words>

The random article feature in Wikipedia is useful, when learning another language; as are the discussion pages.
feati   Wed Mar 17, 2010 9:59 am GMT
>>agit Sat Mar 13, 2010 10:28 pm GMT
>A learner MUST start from a clear, artificial accent and slowly pick up a realistic accent at the advanced stage. You CANNOT start with a realistic accent without first having a clear, artificial one. I have seen people attempt this and the results are disastrous, they just have no idea what they're doing.

----------

I beg to differ. It's not an artifcial accent they need first, but a clear account of phonological structures.

In Germany, students are meant to acquire what you might probably call an artificial or clear accent, and most of them do. But the vast majority of them still doesn't distinguish between bed-bad-bet-bat because they don't know (or don't care about the fact) that these words are supposed to be pronounced differently. Pronouncing them the same doesn't make their accents significantly less clear, so it's nothing to bother about. That's what they think.

Starting from an artificial accent and actually using that accent for several years only makes the transition to a realistic accents harder. It would be more efficient to study phonology first and make sure to get enough input from native speakers. That way, it's possible to get a realistic accents without any detours or the disastrous results you mentioned.
Machus   Wed Mar 17, 2010 11:25 am GMT
But ... this is inevitable!
Pete from Peru   Fri Mar 19, 2010 1:59 am GMT
OK. Thank you very much for your feedback.

I see opinions are a bit divided. Some people thinking learning a proper accent is good and others who believe it's not really that important as there are other serious things to take into accont like grammar, vocabulary, etc.

I think I'm going to do what I was planning anyway. And as it's sort of experimental, then I'll give the lessons for free at the beginning.

I'll then check what the shorterm, midterm and longterm results will be and come back and tell you how it was.

Thanks everyone again

Kinds regards