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Gamajorba
Joined: 03 May 2015
Posts: 357
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 Posted: Tue Jul 21, 2015 11:26 am Post subject: Elocution lessons |
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What do you think of elocution lessons? Useful or not?
And, what would you suggest in this situation:
Woman, mid 40s, advanced level of English but with a heavy accent (let's say Ukrainian), wants to get rid of her Ukrainian accent and needs someone to help with exclusively pronunciation.
Who should be employed? a standard run of the mill TEFL/TESOL teacher, or a specialist in pronunciation etc?
This could spark off a debate about teachers teaching pronunciation in class and how it's all related etc etc...but anyway... |
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spiral78
Joined: 05 Apr 2004
Posts: 11534
Location: On a Short Leash
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| Posted: Tue Jul 21, 2015 2:06 pm Post subject: |
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| 'get rid of' an accent is an unrealistic goal regardless of who is the teacher. We usually speak of 'reduce' or 'minimize' at best. |
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kpjf
Joined: 18 Jan 2012
Posts: 385
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| Posted: Tue Jul 21, 2015 2:12 pm Post subject: |
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If the person understands English quite well I would definitely without question say a speech therapist/specialist in this.
What can a run of the mill TEFL teacher do (unless he or she has specifically trained in pronunciation)?
For example, about 5 years back I lived in Spain and even though I had C2 level (well, I passed a C2 exam) I felt a bit embarrassed about my accent and looked into paying for a speech therapist. I wouldn't have ever considered a regular Spanish as a foreign language teacher for this particular objective.
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| What do you think of elocution lessons? Useful or not? |
How can anyone answer this unless they've given them or taken them? As an adult it's very hard to change an L1 accent in the L2. Also, it can depend on the 2 languages in question. I'm sure it would be much easier for a German to reduce their English accent than for a Chinese native speaker. So, the success could depend on that.
Something simple to do is actually record yourself. I did this myself to become more aware of how I sounded to others and it helped to focus on certain aspects. Of course there are sounds that are hard to formulate in an L2, but there are some things we can consciously change. |
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Gamajorba
Joined: 03 May 2015
Posts: 357
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| Posted: Tue Jul 21, 2015 5:37 pm Post subject: |
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| 'get rid of' an accent is an unrealistic goal regardless of who is the teacher. We usually speak of 'reduce' or 'minimize' at best. |
OK, close enough.
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If the person understands English quite well I would definitely without question say a speech therapist/specialist in this.
What can a run of the mill TEFL teacher do (unless he or she has specifically trained in pronunciation)? |
Exactly what I thought.
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Also, it can depend on the 2 languages in question.
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Well, Ukrainian into English.
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| How can anyone answer this unless they've given them or taken them? |
Exactly why I asked. |
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esl_prof
Joined: 30 Nov 2013
Posts: 2006
Location: peyi kote solèy frèt
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| Posted: Tue Jul 21, 2015 7:38 pm Post subject: |
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| kpjf wrote: |
| What can a run of the mill TEFL teacher do (unless he or she has specifically trained in pronunciation)? |
Well, I've met a few TESL/TEFL instructors out there who are good at teaching pronunciation but, frankly, they seem to be pretty few and far between. Taking a graduate course in phonology can certainly help you understand why ELLs make the mistakes that they do but, at least in my class, we were never really taught how to use that information to actually help students change their pronunciation. |
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