[MUSIC] Welcome back. It's nice to have you here at Teach English Now. In our last video, we saw our rehabilitated host articulate and clarification discuss accents, language ego and different aspects of teaching pronunciation. We hope you enjoyed the video and that you learn something new. In this video, we will discuss some of these concepts in more detail. Let's start by talking about accents. One of the unique phenomena of second language learning is that some people, well, retain an accent. There has been a lot of discussion over the last 100 years as to why some people attain high levels of proficiency, but still retain the sounds and rhythms of their first language, when they articulate speech. One example of someone with a high degree of language proficiency, yet with an accent that didn't quite fit in, is Joseph Conrad. You know that Joseph Conrad who wrote one of the most definitive books in English of all time, the Heart of Darkness? In fact, he was purported to have such a strong Polish accent that his own wife had difficulties understanding him. Now, let's think about this, was this a man that didn't know English well? Absolutely not! His language was pristine! It was amazing. I love that book, but for some reason, as the story goes, his accent remained. Most researchers look to a multitude of variables that contribute to accent. First of all, as you can see with our example of Joseph Conrad, your first language plays a part. In short, your first language often interferes or transfers into how you attempt sounds in the second language. For example, Cantonese has a number of sounds that are produced in the back of the throat, whereas English has sounds that are produced more toward the front. So, when Cantonese speakers learn English, they often mispronounce certain sounds as being farther back than they really are. And consider a few romance languages, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. Those vowels are even more fronted than English vowels. And are generally shorter in length. A, E, I, O, U, in English, and A E I O U. Can you hear that? English is either back than these languages, and the vowels are longer. Even when we say a simple word like, no. It sounds different from language to language. So even though no might be spelled the same and have the same meaning, in English it simply sounds different. No, in English is said with a longer sound. Even with a U sound at the end, no, did you hear that? In many other languages that sound is shorter. No, no, no, no. You hear that? All right, so your first language can sometimes get in the way. Sure, that makes sense. But besides first language, are there any other variables that may present barriers to native-like pronunciation? Well some researchers point to age. Conrad, incidentally, learned English a bit later and that may have contributed to his heavy accent in English.This seems even more likely since he learned French when he was much younger and spoke it with near native like perfection. Other researchers might point to innate phonetic ability stating that some learners simply have a better ear for sounds than others. Others talk about language ego which we have already discussed in some detail in earlier videos. But to review, language ego means that you see your identity as tied up in your language. And that makes a difference in how you end up speaking. It shouldn't surprise you to learn that Joseph Conrad was actually very proud of his Polish heritage, language, and culture. And that these factors may have actually contributed to how he perceived his accent. Why change something that you're proud of? Doesn't make much sense, does it? Well, maybe if you can't understand your wife [LAUGH] and your wife can't understand you, but that's a different story. Other barriers to native-like proficiency come from the fact that pronunciation itself is multifaceted. Learners must show concern not only for sound, but for intonation and stress. Intonation refers to variations of pitch that can occur in different languages. While English isn't a tonal language per se, some teachers still believe we need to teach at least a little bit about intonation. For example, while we don't use tones often we do sometimes use pitch to change the meaning of questions or statements, and sometimes we even show approval or disapproval through our pitch. Don't believe me? Think of all the ways you may have heard someone use a simple word like really. Really? A question. Really. A response, feeling the weight of something heavy, right? Really! A happy exclamation, approval. Really? Dismissive. In other words, sometimes meaning doesn't come from words at all. Rather it comes from the intonation that is given to that word. All right, stress refers to the emphasis put on different syllables within a word or phrase. Stress can make it so that even when you say all the individual sounds correctly, a word is simply misunderstood because you are supposed to add more strength, higher pitch, or higher volume to a certain sound in relation to the sounds or syllables around it. Take, for example, the word photographer. Second language speakers might know the word photo and incorrectly say photo-grapher. But the truth is, the emphasis is on the second syllable. Photographer. Stress can definitely make pronunciation even more difficult especially for learners who encountering words they have never heard spoken. Finally, you may have notice that there are a lot of ways to reduce spoken language making it quite distinct from written language. Speakers often assimilate certain sounds into others. Nasal consonants such as n, m, or n g often make their vowel neighbors a bit more like them. So when I say sang the a becomes a little bit more nasal than if I say a word like safe or late. Those vowels are assimilating. Speakers also tend to drop certain sounds at the end or middle of words. A phenomenon called lexical elision. want to know something? When I speak fast I drop e in elision when I say lexical elision. Lexical elision I almost eat that e completely. Lexical elision. Now, let's discuss one last difficulty for language learners. Unfortunately, in society your accent may define how other people perceive you. In fact, there is a belief that some accents are considered prestige. Prestige accents. A prestige accent means that the accent itself carries some sort of message. Perhaps that'd be a smart, or beautiful, or otherwise, agreeable in some way. Some people are often stereotyped according to accent. And this can create problems for how learners of a second language are perceived. Several learners over my career, recognizing that their accent was not a prestige accent have been quite insistent that they wanted to remove their accent completely, that didn't want people to recognize them as being from their particular culture. Gosh, I hate that. But the truth is that accents carry with them a psycho-social dynamic that can be difficult for you as a teacher to navigate. Is your job to remove an accent entirely so that learners feel that they fit in? Is your job to allow them to keep their accent but make them more intelligible? These are difficult questions to ask and difficult questions to answer and prove even more that teaching language is quite simply a complex and difficult task and worthy of serious thought and reflection. With that, let's move on to our next video and see what teachers can do to help out their learners. See you next time. [MUSIC]
