Archive for May, 2008
Which should come first: intonation or pronunciation?
There is a lot of debate about whether pronunciation or intonation should be taught first in an accent modification course.
I’ve heard it said that intonation accounts for 60% of comprehensibility (and I agree), but does it then follow that it should be taught before pronunciation?
So far, I have been teaching pronunciation exclusively for the first seven or so weeks of my fifteen week courses. In week seven or eight, I start to include intonation and continue with pronunciation. I am considering starting out with intonation as a way to help students train their ears/listening skills from the start, and as a way for them to see more immediate success.
I’m curious to hear what others do and why. Just click on the “Comment” link below to add your thoughts on the topic.
To modify or to reduce, that is the question
Accent trainers such as myself go by many different names, and we call our profession by a variety of names. I use “accent modification” to describe what I do, while others call it “accent reduction.” “Modification” is the politically correct term, but it is also the technically correct term (at least in my opinion), because everyone speaks with an accent. If I change my Western Mass accent to an Eastern Mass/Boston accent (I shudder at the thought), I wouldn’t be increasing or reducing my accent, just changing it.
There is some consensus among accent trainers that “accent modification” is the best term to use, but some concern that employers or clients are more familiar with the term “accent reduction” and won’t immediately understand the service we provide if we call it modification. Is the distinction a minor one? Should we call ourselves what the general public understands? Do we have a duty to educate the public about accents and language and what we do?
Language Museum
Joanne Mason’s blog has a post about a new Museum of Language that is about to open in Maryland in May. It’s unclear from the web site exactly how language will be archived or conserved in a museum. The idea intrigues me, and I hope to make there on one of the odd operating days (every Tuesday and Saturday, and first and third Sundays of each month — huh?).
The museum will have three themes – universal aspects of language, language in society, and languages of the world. The site is tantalizingly vague — I guess I’ll just have to hop on the train and head down there to see what it’s really all about.
How I got into this job
People ask me all the time how and why I got into the accent modification field, so I thought I’d write a bit about it here. I taught college and community ESOL for about ten years. Some students would have really strong accents and others would wind up sounding almost native like. I have a Master’s degree in ESL teaching, but the concept of how to teach pronunciation was never addressed. So when students asked me what to do about accents, I was clueless as how to help them. “Just listen,” was my not very helpful (yet quite accurate) advice. When I started teaching Italian, the same thing would happen — some students would have strong American accents and some would sound like accurate Italian speakers. This made me start to wonder more about accent and started me on a few years of research which culminated in my taking the Compton Method training program.
It does all boil down to listening, but my job is train people not only how to listen, but how to feel what they are doing physically (with their mouth, with their breath) and tie that in to what they hear when they make sounds accurately. Having said that, I do find that my clients aren’t tuned in to the sounds of language, and they are highly represented in “introverted” types of careers — math, science, engineering. I’m a total extrovert and love to hear regional and national accents. Sometimes I get into trouble because I unthinkingly start to mimic whoever I’m talking to!
So, the whole listening and mimicry was a natural for me, and it’s easy for me to teach people how to do it, but the challenge is getting them to consistently do it and change the way they behave and engage in a speech interaction. It’s fascinating work and I am so glad that I found a way to make a living doing something that I love. I am constantly learning about other cultures, about language, and about communication, and constantly improving the service I offer my clients. I have to say that I do have a dream job.
Should accents even be modified?
So what do you think? Should people change their accents? When learning another language, do you aim for native sounding or foreign sounding? Do you love your accent? Do you say it’s other people’s problem if they cannot understand you?
Accent Mod Blog
I’ve decided to move my little blog on accent modification to WordPress in hopes of getting more input from readers. If you have thoughts to share on accent training or accents in general, please share them with me on this blog. Apologies for the ham-handed way of bringing people’s comments from my old blog to this new wordpress blog — I couldn’t find any way to import them, so I had to copy and paste.
