This video may relate to our discussion of Chapter 1:
Although I have not watched this movie, the video clip shows
that the character is able to speak English to some extent, but wishes to learn
the accent. In the video, he wants the world's greatest accent coach to help
him have the purist American accent. However, if you notice he is trying to become
accustomed to the accent in another country (France I believe) and learning in
a single room. He is also learning from one teacher. If you take a look at the
background of the instructional environment, there is not much to work with. It
reflects some of the traditional ways of learning a second language. As we
discussed in class, we can see that more approaches may be needed to acquire
language to a much greater extent.
On another note, it is interesting that the character is
focusing on mastering the accent. I am sure that we all have some reaction when
we hear a person speak English with an accent for the first time. Sometimes
when I am first exposed to a new accent, I tend to focus more on the accent and
not the meaning of the message. But everyone has an accent when speaking to
someone of another language. Accents are also attractive to the ears. Have you
ever said words or phrases (sometimes even lengthy phrases) in a familiar
accent? And then repeated it? Amazing how you can easily become fluent at an accent!
Just a quick response for this posting. We all hear every now and then those funny comments and jokes for English language like, “I speak two languages – Yankee and the Southern,” or “Americans don’t speak English! They speak American.” I took World Englishes for my undergrad and learned in detail about the difference among a variety, a dialect and an accent. An idiolect is another good thing to understand when we deal with language learning. Don’t we need to wish good luck to our students and ourselves who teach or try to teach ESL or any other as a second language? I need this SLT Methodology class so badly.
ReplyDeleteThat clip is hysterical! In my Linguistics 385 class (I also learned it in Intro to Linguistics), many languages do not have the same sounds. For example, the French has a glottal sound that represents their "r". We do not have that sound in English. Also, Japanese do not have the [r] sound, that's why it is difficult for them to say some English words that contain that sound. For example, the Japanese would pronounce "fried rice" as "flied lice" simple because they don't have the "r" sound in their language.
ReplyDeleteAccents are a funny thing for me being people love to ask where I'm from just because they can't place my accent and sometimes have trouble understanding what I'm saying. Which is somewhat frustrating being my native language is English. So it's not just second language learners who have issues with accents, but also native speakers.
ReplyDelete-Kaylynne
There are so many different dialects in the English language that, in a sense, we all have accents. A person speaking British English will evidently sound much different than a person speaking American English. To go even further, in the United States where a majority of the population speaks English, accents and dialects vary from region to region. For example, in the south east, Creole English is spoken in areas such as Louisiana and is clearly distinct from the way English is spoken in the Midwest.
ReplyDelete