America is a melting pot. That is what they say. New York City
is certainly proof of that especially Queens NY. We have Greeks,
Peruvians, Italians, Korean, Spanish and Indians. We in fact
have people from over 120 countries, many recent arrivals. And
together we all must work, play and get along. Certainly it can
get confusing. Miscommunications and misunderstandings abound.
It is a challenge pretty unique to American life. Many
immigrants are speaking English, it is just there own version of
English with there own accents and speech patterns. These
accents can make a Chinese person sound angry when they are not,
or a Korean person sound more diminutive than what they are
feeling. How often does the Italian or Spanish person sound more
emotional to our ears than how they are feeling? Many of our
stereotypes do come from the person's accent.
The Spanish and Italian languages have a pattern of rising
intonation, while American English has more peaks and valleys,
so when they apply there natural stress pattern to English they
sound emotional to our ear. The Russian intonation goes down at
the end of each sentence. When this is applied to the English
language they can sound depressed. How many impressions are we
receiving incorrectly due to accents? And what must it be like
when two heavily accented people talk to each other?
Learning English is no easy task; we speak figuratively and use
a great deal of idioms. Many have to learn English while trying
to earn a living or get a degree. How much time can they put
into English pronunciation? Well in all honesty in this age of
information and service industry growth they may want to find
some time to put into it. People spending money on services want
to be able to communicate clearly with the waiter, the sales
staff and the tech support person on the phone. Promotions and
jobs are going to those who have the communication skills.
Attending accent training classes can be inefficient as they
usually have students with many different language backgrounds
in one room. Each background has there own challenges and it is
difficult for the teacher to get to everyone and allow everyone
to get enough practice. For some following a school schedule
would just be impossible. Textbooks for self study just don't
cut it. You need to hear the sound before you can copy it! Tapes
and videos involve rewinding and cueing to hear the examples
repeated, which can be frustrating and a waste of time. Now
however, accent training has gone high tech. You can now work on
your accent with the help of your computer. This is ideal as so
much information can be packed into one software CD-ROM. These
CD's contain animated graphics, video clips, waveform graphs,
and lots of practice games. The other feature that the software
contains is instant feedback. You just click the button and you
can record yourself and play both yourself and the model speaker
to assess how well you have done. You can here the examples over
and over again with no rewinding or cueing. It does seem to me
that the high tech solution to accent training has finally
arrived!
About the author:
Lynn Bo is an expert in the field of accent reduction who posses
advanced training in accent reduction and phonology. She is also
the founder of http://www.AccentMaster.com a line of accent
reduction software programs. She can be reached at
Lynn@AccentMaster.com.
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