Re: Pronunciation

> I recently sat in an Pronounciation/Accent Reduction workshop, hoping
> to pick up some clues on improving my spoken English. The outcome of
> this experience, however, was a bit of surprise to me. I wrote it in
> more details in my blog http://lingualbee.blogspot.com/.
> 
> I guess the workshop is right for some people, but not for the others.
> 
> David
> 


The workshop, from your description, seemed to concentrate on the
phonemes of English. These are important because the further a NNS is
from the phonemes usually heard by other users of English, the more
effort the listener has to make. The speaker may be understood but
empathy is lost. If you are always having to decode the speaker and
interpret their phonemes you are less likely to have patience with
their views. The workshop didn't seem to cover intonation and stress,
two other key elements in spoken English. If the NNS hasn't mastered
these then they have problems in getting anything above their basic
message across and problems in being understood and listened to,
especially in extended speech. Chinese, for L! reasons, find
intonation and stress harder than do speakers of languages that place
more importance on these features. I know this from bitter experience
having attended international conferences with Chinese and other
presenters. A speaker with a mono-syllabic tonal background is at a
disadvantage.

When it comes to the importance of usage I agree totally. This is
where a grammar translation background lets the learner down. Usage
can be best learned by living the language, which is what David did.

Dick Tibbetts
Hong Kong, Asia's WC








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