Pondering about myself: reflective
journals
Robert Collier said once “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated
day in and day out”. Learning anything, needs effort, persistence and big portions
of self-demanding grit. Without any of these traits never we’ll achieve our goal.
The more time you practise, the better you will do. It’s a done deal. In
my case I’m used to listening original videos, radio, (BBC radio 4 , for
instance is a good one ), watching tv serials, films or news ( BBC, CNN…) or
reading online newspapers (Guardian, ABC, BBC
news..) that have thousands of videos in, getting used to all the range
of accents.
The second part is the oral one. There are several ways to practice, but
basically can be summed up by just one word: rehearsal
(either imitate or repeat).
It’s not such a good idea to
practice talking with people at your own level of knowledge, because there’s no
place for the improvement, unless there was an external person that were correcting constantly, hard to be a common option.
Learning by hard some lyrics, or repeating any dialogue of any video you
are interested in. Mind you, does not
a baby child learn to talk any language? In fact, that’s back to real, difficult as it may be (Chinese or Japanese
for instance).
In summary, it reminds me of the
old lore: work, work and a little bit more of work.
My fav and fab pronunciation tools. - Eva garrido
I have always considered pronunciation to be the most
important thing when studying a foreign language. Admittedly, not only pronunciation but also
intonation.
To have a good pronunciation in English, listening
Tasks are the most important tool within my reach. The
favourite supports I use the most are the fabulous TED: Ideas worth spreading.
I remember once I
heard about how to talk like a native speaker. The speaker talked about the
process of learning a foreign language and the different levels of fluency. In a
nutshell, what are the requirement to sound like a native speaker?
The requirement is
work on eliminating your accent at most if you are gifted (not my sort) or at
least minimizing it. The best exercise I found to improve my pronunciation is
repeating sentences I heard in a movie with the same pronunciation and
intonation that native speaker, rehearsals once and again, recording myself
until the sentence I am saying sounds like the native speaker actor.
But obviously, to learn how to pronounce well, you
first have to learn to listen to be able to distinguish sounds that seem the
same (ex. Lack / Luck). Again movies are a good tool for this, although I go
for songs more than I lean on movies.
When I detect a word that I have been mispronouncing
for a long time, I immediately correct that error. Indeed, the longer I
continue to mispronounce that word the more difficult it will be to correct
that vice. Again poor rehearsals follow better
repeating out loud as the key to remembering and memorizing the correct
pronunciation of that word. An example among many, anxiety. I pronounced it as it was written when de
pronunciation is /aŋˈzʌɪəti/.
You don't start talking with the rhythm and intonation
of a native overnight, but luckily I've always had a good ear for music and
pronunciation (also in French, because at school my generation studied French,
never English). For some reason, pronunciation,
intonation and emphasis are not my weaknesses, which does not mean that I do
not have to work on them because there is always room for improvement. Anyway, as
the Chinese proverb goes: practice makes you perfect; so old virtues such as
perseverance and consistency is what has helped me keep on this journey of
discovery: intonation improvement is
paramount.
Reflecting on techniques to improve pronunciation - Laia S.
This paper aims to assess personal learning and
improvement in English pronunciation. Analysing my own speech and fine-tuning
the ear has been the best attitudes for correcting, perfecting and discovering
a pile of personal mistakes related to intonation and pronunciation. It must be acknowledged, though, that there is always
something to learn and improve, even though we personally believe we are
already doing well.
First of all, to delve into the learning of English
pronunciation, I started listening songs, something that was perfect for me to
listen to, practice and enjoy at the same time. Katy Perry, OneRepublic, Ellie
Goulding, SIA, have been the favourite singers and groups to be able to
understand the lyrics well and enjoy their music. Now then, the songs have been
always subtitled to follow the lyrics, learn it and, later, be able to sing it
with Karaoke.
In the second place, working on dialogues on diverse series
like Modern Family, Once upon a time, The Vampire Diaries, Friends – has
been a hard task for me, but I felt it quite interesting to practice English,
pronunciation, expressions, intonations, and so on. Loving series is what has
helped me to see them in their original version, so I had a delightful time
with a great resource.
The operation I followed has been the same as with the
songs, listening to the dialogs and reading the subtitles. In addition, I have
also chosen some chapters that I liked the most, I have reproduced them and, in
the meantime, I have been writing the dialogue.
However, seen from the negative side, it must be said
that sometimes it is difficult to have time to do it, having a good
concentration, a good predisposition, etc. And, fortunately, this has been
possible for the quarantine but during the daily routine it is much more
strenuous. Moreover, practicing the parallel reading technique has
also been great for me to immediately realize which the most arduous words to
pronounce properly were and which were more accurate. Hearing the two voices at
the same time (own and the one in the video) is highly recommended because it
is greatly evident. Nevertheless, this task is not much fun, because
interacting with yourself is quite boring.
Another way to work on it was to record my voice reading
20 seconds of a snippet of dialogue, and repeat it 3 different days later, to
analyse changes. And I have really noticed some small improvement. Awesome! Listening has also been a good resource, and I have
honestly noticed it a lot both for fine-tuning my ear and for acquiring
pronunciation. Also, taking advantage of the lockdown, I have been able to do
it more often than before, and it has helped me a lot, especially in improving
my listening attitude. I learnt to avoid the wish of understanding all the
words.
Finally, I must say that more than the pronunciations, I
have found a great change in intonation. Culture and mother tongue, I guess,
have a big influence on the way I speak, and that one is different from
English. Well, despite that fact, I will keep working on it because I have
realized my improvement and my evolution.
And eventually, if I had to recommend
a starting point for all we are learning English, I would say start with what
makes you happy and reminds you good times, such as listening music, watching
childhood movies, reading comics or novels. It is a constructive task that
encourages you to move forward and take the initiative to continue building
yourself.
Learning, Learning,
Learning… - Albert B.
After having received your last
asignment proposal, I admit I
felt.... Touché. and paraphrasing the famous Emile Zola’s
headline: “J’accuse”, I could subscribe it with a little change: “Je m’accuse”. Of what? Of having a bad
pronunciation. What must be done to solve it?
First of all, I recognised it, I have
to read out loud; from the best bits,
recording my work, listening to it and keep on repeating.
Secondly, to check online the
pronunciation of the words, even if i guessed it was known, mostly the ones I
do not know the correct pronunciation or I make mistakes, recording them,
listening, checking the results and some days after, do again and repeating
again and again (these words are going to be kind of my particular mantra).
Thirdly, to choose some episodes from
TV series, watching first in English version with English subtitles, watching
after without them, doing a self-dictation from them and finally, trying to
reproduce the dialogues of little bits of several episodes and rehearse them,
in a funny, non shy way.
Fourthly and being lucky, finding a
partner, with a better English knowledge than mine, to practise the
conversation, hoping that this partner is willing to correct me. At the
beginning, I would prefer an English partner to start with teh more classic RP.
As time goes by, and knowledge becomes established, I would try to expand
relationships and learn about the wide variety of regional and Commonwealth
accents.
Finally and to resume, almost
everything revolves around the mantra stated at the title ... with the sound
track of an all-time clàssic Perhaps, perhaps,
perhaps by Doris Day: “If I can't make my mind up I'll never
get started”. However, I am not young and my question is: will I
have enough time to do it?
PS: Until now, I have left aside the songs.
Owing to not-in-my-prime hearing talents, I believe that I will give up soon;
taking into account that even sometimes I am even not able to understand
correctly some fragments sung in Spanish or Catalan. I suppose that applying
the mantra I could have a slight hope of success, but all at due time.
