Learning to speak a foreign language – Just like learning to - TopicsExpress

Learning to speak a foreign language – Just like learning to sing Many people I talk to about learning to speak English think that what is needed is to just practice – practice – practice. So they sign up for a “Conversational English” class….and never improve. Now I am not talking about “Accent Reduction”. All the many varieties of accents is one of the things that makes English interesting. I used to have a very thick “Boston Accent” which I had to change because nobody understood me! Actually I would prefer to speak like the Antonio Banderas!!!! The best way for me to explain my”theory” is to compare learning to speak a foreign language to learning to sing. I will use myself as an example. I used to sing terribly. Everybody told me to shut up at birthday parties, for example. When I was a kid in school the teacher told me to just open my mouth and pretend to sing when the class had to perform songs for Christmas. Well at a certain period in my life I decided to take singing lessons. My teacher, Janice, was very patient, and would give me exercises to do during the week. I had to vocalize the scales and do breathing exercises etc., as well as practice singing a song …correctly. She could tell if I did my “homework”. And she would always say: “Paul, you are doing well. You can sing! Just keep doing the exercises and some day your voice will sound nice.” And that day came. At one point I was singing some song at work and a friend said: “Paul, that sounds ok. You used to sound like a frog!!!” So all I can say about learning to speak a foreign language is ….it is necessary to learn proper pronunciation and breathing and the student needs to do the correct exercises every day! Learning a foreign language is …foreign….because the student is learning foreign sounds which are difficult to make. And English could be the most difficult language in the world to pronounce in the first place. Students need to learn to pronounce certain difficult sounds in particular, such as the letters G and J, L-R and V-W. Then the short I and short U and the combination of TH. This would be the equivalent of singing the scales every day. Teachers should have good pronunciation also, othewise they are teaching bad habits. So this is my advice, and I have been teaching English as a Foreign language for 25 or so years and always have used this approach.