Currently, all of my ESL students are advanced and want to work on their speaking and conversation skills. We only occasionally need to review any grammar points. Mostly, we are focusing on accent reduction, pronunciation and general speaking skills.
I hope that I don't forget all that I have learned about grammar and teaching English grammar!
I met with a potential new ESL student the other day. He primarily wants to work on his speaking skills. He said he's tired of people in his office not being able to understand him. He's fluent in English. English was taught along with his native language in his country, so he's been speaking English since he was a kid. He also went to college and graduate school in the U.K.
The main problem is his accent and pronunciation. But an interesting thing was his insight about not wanting to let go of his accent. He had some emotional attachment to it. He felt almost as if he'd be selling out if he sounded "more American." And yet, he wants to take private ESL lessons to help him with his English.
This was just a reminder to me that learning to communicate effectively in English isn't only about English. There may be a lot of other things going on that can get in the way of improving one's English. The ESL's tutor or teacher's awareness of this may help him or her to be a better teacher.
Many of my private ESL students are advanced level ESL speakers. Many come to me because they want to sound more like a native English speaker. Together, we work on many ways to improve their American English pronunciation and reduce their native accents. We look at intonation, pronunciation of words and of individual sounds, we look at voiced and unvoiced sounds, etc.
We also look at reductions and contractions. Most advanced ESL students are very familiar with contractions. They've been taught about them many times. However, very few of my students use contractions. As a matter of fact, when they are reading aloud to me, they will even take apart a contraction. "I'll" becomes "I will" when they are reading. So it is often very difficult for ESL speakers to consistently use contractions.
And yet, the use of contractions during speaking is one of the best ways to move toward sound more "native." With a lot of practice and reinforcement, non-native English speakers can move towards sounding more native by using this one technique.
I'm working with an advanced ESL student from Mexico. Her English is very good. We're concentrating on accent reduction and pronunciation skills. For the last couple of weeks, we've been working on "alphabet vowels" and "relative vowels" (essentially "long" and "short" vowel sounds). Most recently, we're working on the relative vowel sounds. I use the book Clear Speech
Another of the challenges she has is differentiating between the "b" and "v" sounds. I remember from studying Spanish that as a native English speaker, I have trouble making the b/v combination sound that Spanish speakers use.
I've found a great tongue twister to work on both the "b" sound and all the relative vowels (as well as the t/d issue). "Betty Botter" is helping with all of these issues.
You can read more about Using Tongue Twisters for Pronunciation on my other website. "Betty Botter" is also written there in its entirety.
I often help my ESL students prepare for job interviews. I usually give my students a list of the most common interview questions and then we practice the answers during our sessions together.
Today as I was looking up the links for common interview questions on monster.com, I came across an interesting article called, "Do You Sound Right for the Job?" (I'm not going to put the link here because it will become obsolete in a little while. Monster is always moving around their pages. You can do a Google search for the article if you want to see the whole thing.)
One of the interesting points is how a slight accent can actually be an advantage. A thick accent will often work against someone in a job interview. The article also says that accents trigger emotional responses in us.
Dianne Markley, a professor at the University of North Texas at Denton, states in the article that job seekers with accents should "'First, relax. An accent is part of who you are. It connects you with your family and a particular part of the world. An accent is not a bad thing.'
At the same time, 'Be careful how you use the English language,' Markley cautions. 'Be sure to use good grammar. Speak slowly. Don't get frustrated if you have to repeat yourself. There's plenty of stress in job seeking. Don't add more by worrying about your accent.'"
Who doesn’t have an accent? Do Americans have accents? What is an American accent? Who has an American accent? People from Minnesota? New York? Georgia? California? The San Fernando Valley?
Natives from each of these places have accents. Most Americans can generally discern where a speaker with one of these accents if from. We even make fun of some American accents. Being a California native, of course I think Californians don’t have accents at all!
Many ESL speakers try to reduce the accents they have from their first languages. In the field of TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) we use the term “accent reduction” frequently. Many of the students I’ve had have come to me to work on their accents.
What if ESL teachers were to take the approach of “accent imitation” rather than “accent reduction?” What if the focus was on teaching students how to imitate American accents, rather than trying to get rid of the ESL speaker’s accent? I wonder what the effects, if any, would be on the psyche of ESL learners. Would it help them to learn faster? I don’t know. Just wondering.
I've taught quite a few ESL students over the last couple of years and I've noticed one interesting thing that advanced ESL learners from all over the world have in common. The one thing is that almost all of them watch the sitcom "Friends" in their home countries.
A couple of summers ago, I taught ESL to a class of about 20 high school students from France. Three of the students spoke almost like native English-speaking high school kids. Their American English accents impressed me most. I asked them how they learned to sound so much like Americans. All of them said that they watched "Friends" and "old" American movies (I was suprised to hear that "old" meant movies from the '70s!). They had never been to the U.S. before and yet their accents were nearly perfect.
I've learned from several other advanced ESL learners visiting the U.S. that they also watch "Friends" in their home countries.
I've started asking beginning students to watch "Friends." Even though beginning ESL student's English skills are limited, I've found that we are still able to effectively use episodes as discussion topics.
The one challenge I've found with using this particular teaching tool is that in my part of the country, "Friends" reruns are played back-to-back. But, the two episodes are from different seasons. There might be one episode with Monica and Chandler getting married and another episode with Monica dating Tom Selleck. This can be a little confusing for the student. And me!
