How do I get rid off my student's accent?

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Zelicious

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Hello, I have started giving private one-on-one English lessons to my Thai student, who is studying intermediate level English. She needs to focus on conversational English, and needs to get rid of her accent.

I literally have no experience in teaching adults. I would like get some suggestions from other teachers from this forum. I, myself, am still a student and currently doing for my IELTS. Any suggestions are welcome and thanks in advance.

Crystal
 
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konungursvia

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You can't get rid of an accent without exposure to a community that doesn't have that accent. Studying phonetics will help, like poor Eliza Doolittle, but then you'd still have to choose an accent to emulate.
 

TheParser

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Hello, I have started giving private one-on-one English lessons to my Thai student, who is studying intermediate level English. She needs to focus on conversational English, and needs to get rid of her accent.

I literally have no experience in teaching adults. I would like get some suggestions from other teachers from this forum. I, myself, am still a student and currently doing for my IELTS. Any suggestions are welcome and thanks in advance.

Crystal


NOT A TEACHER


(1) Several years ago, I knew an outstanding teacher at the

best adult ESL school in the United States (only in my opinion,

of course) who did not do accent reduction per se, but who did

teach them how to pronounce every letter of the alphabet

correctly (that is, where to put the tongue). She also told her

adoring students that they would never get rid of their

accents completely. I guess that she was right, for I guess that

an adult will always have a trace of accent.

(2) She also wrote a fantastic book showing the students

exactly where to put their tongues to produce the desired

sound. I assume that you have bought a book of this kind to

guide you.


Respectfully yours,


James


P.S. I have placed the following information here so that a moderator

can easily and cleanly delete it if she/he decides to do so. This website

allows posters to recommend books if it feels that the poster is not

sneaking in an advertisement. The book is entitled Realistically

Speaking. The author is Planaria Price.
 

GUS22

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How do you get rid of your accent ?
We all have accents they arent a problem - what is a problem is when someones accent is so strong you cant understand them. Then you have to teach phonetics. Thais will mix r and l a lot. They will also have problems with TH sounds. You have to teach them where to position their tongue etc.
 

AlexAD

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Hello.
I'm not a teacher nor a native speaker

I am sorry to intrude but may I ask you Zelicious what's the point of getting rid of local accent by a one who is understood by natives? I recognize that the question migh have raised by a student but if I were you I would ask them about it. It can hardly ever be something tied up with the skills required by an employer. Please reply if I'm wrong.

I think that if you're a native you'll speak like a native, otherwise you won't and you can't help it.

In addition I agree with TheParser in that you couldn't speak like natives if you didn't grow up among them.

Thank you,
Alex.
 

konungursvia

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Hello.

I'm not a teacher nor a native speaker

I am sorry to intrude but may I ask you Zelicious what's the point of getting rid of local accent by a one who is understood by natives? I recognize that the question might have raised by a student so if I were you I would ask them about it. It can hardly ever be something tied up with the skills required by an employer. Please reply if I'm wrong.

I think that if you're a native you'll speak like a native, otherwise you won't and you can't help it.

In addition I agree with TheParser and konungursvia in that you couldn't speak like natives if you didn't grow up among them.

Thank you,
Alex.


I think it's pretty common for a learner not to want interference from their mother tongue in the second language. Isn't that obvious? Would you aim to keep an American accent while learning French?
 

suikerbossie

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If one speaks correctly and can be understood, why complicate life by trying to get rid of an accent?

Maybe I wouldn't keep an American accent when trying to speak French, but a French accent when speaking English is attractive.

My opinion only.
 

GUS22

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My father is/was Czech and is now a leading Psychologist in the UK. He came to England in 1968 . As a top academic his use of English is far more advanced and sophisticated than many people born in the UK and his vocabulary a lot larger seeing as he has a brain the size of a planet. He still has a Czech accent though.
 

AlexAD

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I think it's pretty common for a learner not to want interference from their mother tongue in the second language. Isn't that obvious? Would you aim to keep an American accent while learning French?

Yes that's pretty obvious, but I think it's a mistake when some people stick to its own language while learning foreign one.
 

GUS22

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Actually the only person who I have ever met in my life who actually fooled me into believing they were a native speaker was a Thai (I taught in Pak Chong 180 km north of Bangkok) . I sincerely thought she was American. My jaw dropped when she told me she was Thai. Astonished, I asked her where she learnt English - the answer - watching movies !
 

Zelicious

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Hi guys, I'm so grateful for these replies.

First of all, I am not a native speaker nor a teacher. I learned English as a child and have a wee bit of accent which Americans would assume British, and Brits would say Australian. I don't realise myself but it is a bit confusing sometimes, so I'd just smile whenever I was told.

Thais have a very thick accent which they mispronounce "L" "R" "W" "V" and "TH" sounds. Since I have been living in Thailand for 5 years already, I have no problems with their way of speaking English. I think if she was in the states or UK, she'd not be easily understood with her accent, and that is where I come in to fix.

I and my student had a brief lesson today, where we practised, "L" and "R". By the way, my student's reading skill is decent although I have not checked her writing yet. I suppose she is well exposed to native speakers since she is married to one, thus, always being around them.

I plan to work on phonetics, sentence intonations, consonant and colloquial expressions with her.

ThePersar, thank you so much for your excellent suggestion. I am definitely checking out the book you recommended, along with other work books.

AlexAD, you have raised an interesting question. I think having an accent makes you a more interesting person as long as it is easily understood. I do not personally care and a lot of my native speaker friends admit that they find a person, with a little bit of accent, more interesting.

However, when it comes to landing at a good job, being a leader in a social group, or whatever their personal reasons are, at least once in a life, they want to get rid of their heavy unnatural native accent. I do not think I can ever fix my student's accent and I will not try because it is nearly impossible for her. Nonetheless, my job is to correct her mispronunciation, well, that's why I am hired. I have to put every effort to help her.
 
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Zelicious

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Yes that's pretty obvious, but I think it's a mistake when some people stick to its own language while learning foreign one.

Exactly, now I just realized that I titled it wrong. It should have been "how do I correct my student's wrong pronunciation" I won't get rid of her local accent but correcting her pronunciation.
 
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Zelicious

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Actually the only person who I have ever met in my life who actually fooled me into believing they were a native speaker was a Thai (I taught in Pak Chong 180 km north of Bangkok) . I sincerely thought she was American. My jaw dropped when she told me she was Thai. Astonished, I asked her where she learnt English - the answer - watching movies !

Couldn't agree any more. Her husband asked me what is my teaching method for her and I said I will encourage her to watch movies and next day we discuss. He said "No, correct her tones first" How annoying?

Now, I can teach her forever but if she does not have strong a desire for a "change" and lack of "concentration", nothing will help, even god comes down and teach. As I said in my previous post, we worked shortly today. I taught her it is "result" not "wesult", after repeating a few times, she could say "result". Then I moved to next word, for example "review", she would pronounce "wewoo", we repeated and she corrected but she would pronounce again "wesult" if I asked again!

Frustrating!!
 

Zelicious

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NOT A TEACHER

The book is entitled Realistically

Speaking. The author is Planaria Price.

Hi there I checked it out. The program is so promising that now I have a hope for my student. I watched her sample videos of the program. Just in a few minutes, I noticed how our tongue and mouth move to make these different sounds. Impressed. High chance that I will buy but where?
 
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NdrewAllmark

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If you are worried that your learner's accent is affecting the intelligibility of her speech, then it is a good idea to help her improve her pronunciation. This does not jsut involve showing her how to pronounce words, but also teaching her to hear them.

Dictation exercises are a useful way to analyse what she is hearing. Say a short sentence at a normal speaking pace, without seperating the words or slowing down. Repeat it a couple of times and see what she writes down. When you have seen this you can say it again more slowly so she does not become demotivated. If you can better understand how a learner hears, you can understand why they talk the way they do.

It is important that she can differentiate between sounds. Minimal pairs activities are useful for this. The learner is introduced to pairs of words that are similar, but have one different sound (e.g. 'bat' and 'bait'). The teacher reads a word and the learner circles the one they hear.

To teach phonemes the learner must be able to 'see' how the sound is produced, as they might not be able to identify sounds aurally. She could use a mirror to watch her own mouth as she tries to imitate yours. The lips, jaw and tongue are all used to produce sounds, and they may be voiced or unvoiced (eg. /b/ and /p/ have the same mouth shapes, but the voice box is active when you say /b/).

It is not just individual sounds (segmental features) that we use. Things like stress and intonation are important too (suprasegmental features). The latter is quite hard to teach.

Also it would be useful to research 'connected speech'. When we put words together and talk quickly the sounds change. Most native speakers are not aware of this, but it can really affect a learner's ability to understand speech, and produce it well.


"How to teach pronunciation" by Gerald Kelly or "Sound Foundations" by Adrian Underhill are both excellent books.

But bear in mind that the idea of completely "getting rid" of an accent may not be desirable. Bear in mind that accent is tied up with identity, and people may subconciously hold on to their old accents.

I hope this is helpful. It's a big area, but is well worth researching.
 

SoothingDave

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I am not a teacher, but I do work with a lot of foreign clients. An accent is "charming" if it does not hinder communication. When a native speaker has to strain and concentrate to understand a foreign speaker, it makes things a lot harder.

For all involved.

Accent is not only pronunciation, it is also rhythm and emphasis.
 

mackshane1984

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hi


you are most welcome to this education forum site,here you can find lots of thing related to ur education career
and for your query u can contact your freinds.

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