4 posts tagged “pronunciation”
Develop the habit of imitating and do not study grammar! You will learn English faster! I will follow up, here, on the previous post which referred to mirror neurons, and discuss how to use this phenomenon when you learn English on The Linguist system. In the example of my previous post, I was able to react instantly to the driver in front of me. I was able to anticipate the intentions of the driver in front of me without thinking. My neurons took over. I believe it was the mirror neurons. The instructions on what to do in that situation did not come from a "grammar book" or a driving instruction manual. It is the same in language learning. We need exposure to the language. Listening and reading are key to creating familiarity with the language, and especially in building up vocabulary. Formalized output exercizes that are found in grammar or text books are not necessary and do not work on our imitative ability. ( See my previous post on the inability of output to improve usage accuracy for a group of English learners in Japan). Instead, repetitive reciting of phrases is, I am convinced, the most effective and easiest way to practice output in the language whenever we want. It is not enough to observe someone driving, although it helps a lot. It is important to also drive oneself, in order to notice what is happening. I believe that in the case of language learning, it is not enough just to listen and read, although this should be our main activity since it is enjoyable (creating flow). It is not necessary to study grammar or answer grammar questions, since these do not work very well, and are stressful. It is, on the other hand, most useful to practice repeating a phrase, at least 5 times each time, immediately after hearing it. This can be done by just stopping the iPod from time to time and repeating the last phrase. Do this with an emphasis on the rhythm and intonation of the language, rather than on remembering the words. This in no way this makes reading and listening and the deliberate and efficient learning of vocabulary less important. It just improves your ability to perceive, observe, hear, notice and eventually imitate another language.
This study investigated whether giving learners an opportunity for oral output has any positive effect on the L2 learners' acquisition of a grammatical form. Twenty-four adult ESL learners were randomly assigned to one of three groups: an output group, which engaged in a picture description task that involved input comprehension and output production; a non-output group, which engaged in a picture sequencing task that required input comprehension only; and a placebo control group. The two treatment groups were exposed to the same aural input for the same amount of time. Learning was assessed by means of a pre-test and a post-test consisting of production and reception parts. The results indicated that, contrary to our expectations, the output group failed to outperform the non-output group. On the contrary, it was the non-output group that showed greater overall gains in learning. A careful post-hoc re-examination of the treatment tasks revealed that the output task failed to engage learners in the syntactic processing that is necessary to trigger L2 learning, while the task for the non-output group appeared to promote better form-meaning mapping.
Yukiko Izumi and Shinichi Izumi
Investigating the Effects of Oral Output on the Learning of Relative Clauses in English: Issues in the Psycholinguistic Requirements for Effective Output Tasks
I believe that if the output is done in a non-stressful way, like imitating with a focus on the rhythm of phrases, then it does help with grammar, usage and pronunciation.
Listening to audio contents read by talented story tellers creates a stronger emotional bond to the target language and is better for language learning. At times it is good to listen straight through to enjoy the sense of achievement in grasping the meaning of a new language. At other times we should stop the MP3 player at every phrase and repeat the phrase to ourselves out loud 5-10 times, concentrating only on the rhythm and intonation and not worrying about words that we forget. If we can reproduce the rhythm and intonation of the language our auditory perception, pronunciation and confidence improve. We also develop a better sense of the little bits, the prepositions, articles, verb and noun forms etc. As much as possible we should listen to whatever we read in the new language and read whatever we listen to, at least until we are past the intermediate stage. Any comments?
We have a winner!
As you know, we held a Pronunciation Challenge during the summer. Members were asked to submit two recordings of their pronunciation, spaced a month or six weeks apart. The person whose pronunciation improved the most, not the person with the best pronunciation, would be declared the winner.
Well, the winner was decided by a jury of Jill, Kerri, Mark, Sean and Steve.
The winner was Ruth Bayona.
Thank you to everyone who participated.
Congratulations to Ruth.
In my view it is important to work on pronunciation because it is a good way to train your mind in English. Of course you should visualize yourself speaking like a native speaker. But you should also have fun with it. Do not put pressure on yourself. Language is just a way to communicate meaning. As long as you are comfortable and confident communicating, a “foreign” accent is not a handicap.
To be a successful learner you just need to enjoy the language. Get in the habit of enjoying your pronunciation practice. Do not take it too seriously. Use the exercizes at our PRONOUNCE page,or mimic some of our contents at The Linguist. If you take it easy and have fun, you will improve your pronunciation faster than if you think you have to "correct" your accent.
