What techniques do you use to improve TL pronunciation / accent?

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Re: What techniques do you use to improve TL pronunciation / accent?

Postby garyb » Thu Jan 03, 2019 12:22 pm

CompImp wrote:I'm betting you've probably done less than 1000 hours of listening practice. You don't have a 'bad ear', that's not possible since everyone can learn at least one language. You just need to put much more time in. Tens of thousands of hours. As i've said, it's not practical for most adults though, or it's not what they want to do anyway.
I don't think it's fair to make assumptions. I've never counted so I can't be sure, but between the films, TV, radio, and conversations in my years of study I'd estimate I've listened to well over a thousand hours of both French and Italian. Tens of thousands though, probably not!

When I say a "bad ear" I just mean relative to the many people who can imitate just from hearing and speak a language with a good accent either right from the start or after tens to hundreds of hours. I just need to work harder than them, whether that means more study or just more listening, and likewise they might need to work harder (or "spend more time" for those who insist on the difference between "acquiring" and "learning") than me on other aspects like grammar. Yes, I agree that speaking a language even with a great accent after so little time isn't very useful especially if you can't understand the response, but that's completely beside the point in a thread focused on pronunciation.

I think there's sometimes far too much focus on numbers over quality too. I fully agree that thousands of hours of listening are required, and I don't want to argue over differences on what, if anything, should be done in addition to these as that's been discussed to death and there are examples of success with all sorts of methods. But it needs to be said that one must pay plenty attention and know what details to listen for in pronunciation and usage, rather than just passively taking in enough to understand. I think it's a fair estimate that immigrants living in a country for several decades have heard tens of thousands of hours yet many still have strong foreign accents, not to mention weaknesses in other areas of the language, and I imagine a lot of that is because (consciously or not) they just want to get by rather than to master the language and so they don't pay attention to the details.
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Re: What techniques do you use to improve TL pronunciation / accent?

Postby Beli Tsar » Fri Jan 04, 2019 10:13 am

CompImp wrote:I'm betting you've probably done less than 1000 hours of listening practice. You don't have a 'bad ear', that's not possible since everyone can learn at least one language. You just need to put much more time in. Tens of thousands of hours. As i've said, it's not practical for most adults though, or it's not what they want to do anyway.

Why is it not possible to have a bad ear?

I have, as you said, l learned my own native language - and to a level high enough to be paid to correct professional communicators and academics use of the language.

But I still have a bad ear even in English.

Ok, my pronunciation is fine. But I can't imitate the local accents of the place I grew up, nor of the places I have lived for years at a time. In fact, I would struggle to describe what those accents even are - though they are very pronounced and distinctive accents.

Yet my brother or sister can shift between those accents at will.

It would be strange not to link this to my really rather terrible French pronunciation.

And there are those who have studied a language and not listened for more than a couple of hundred hours who have a pretty good accent. My mum, has never listened to French radio or watched TV or anything, and her French isn't great, but she has been mistaken for a French native speaker by French people repeatedly.

I'm sure we can all make progress, whether by listening or more concentrated study, but there seems to be no evidence that everyone's ability is actually equal - and some of us are quite bad...
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Re: What techniques do you use to improve TL pronunciation / accent?

Postby Iversen » Fri Jan 04, 2019 11:31 am

I have experimented with some techniques that involved listening closely, like making exact transcripts from short passages in my target languages (in homemade sound writings adapted to the language in question), but since pronunciation isn't one of my chief occupations when I am at home I got bored and stopped using those techniques.

When I travel I just suck up what I hear around me, and if I in other respects know the local lingo well enough I start speaking with whatever pronunciation I have got at that point. My experience is that people understand what I say, and that's good enough for me - at least for a start.

And no, I don't condone laziness, even though I in some cases practice it.
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Re: What techniques do you use to improve TL pronunciation / accent?

Postby David1917 » Fri Jan 04, 2019 3:25 pm

CompImp wrote:Now, is it that you're just 'bad' or is it that you needed to put in much, much more time than your siblings ? The number one excuse for people not being able to do things compared to others is innate talent and the time put in is always discarded.

Do we ignore Steve Vai's multiple tens of thousands of hours with a guitar in his hand when describing his playing ability ?

I've never seen a single solitary person who has put in several tens of thousands of hours of correct practice (in language, comprehensible input) and not reached a very good level. The people who say they don't have innate ability are always people who haven't put in the requisite amount of time.


We've had discussions on comparing accent to music before - it's one of those chicken or egg things; like if Steve Vai wasn't innately drawn to the guitar, would he have spent 12 hours a day practicing, thus being the legend he is? Without going too deep into the "psychology" of it all, I think we're all pretty convinced that some people are more artistic, some people are more mechanical, etc. Could Steve Vai, instead of playing music gone to an engineering school and instead created some new space rocket? Or if Arnold hurt his knee when he began training and instead focused all of his energy on music, would he be a virtuoso? They both have the same obsessive laser-like drive, but it was always single-minded.

So as it pertains to language and accent, I do think there are varying levels of talent. There are the people you meet who can do effortless impersonations of celebrity x or foreigner y. You hear other people do impersonations and they all end up in some weird half-British half-Russian vocal mess. Prof Arguelles lived in Berlin but still hired a vocal coach because his accent wasn't coming to him (perhaps not in the timeline he would have liked i.e. before having thousands of hours of listening to the streets around him). He's spent several months in Russia, has read classics of Russian literature with audio accompaniment and still has a pretty bad Russian accent, despite logging all those hours.

You said that one might need to put in "much, much more time" than others, and then called talent an excuse? I don't follow because if someone has to put in less time to achieve a better result, then they must have some extra skill? I don't think one should give up and say "bah I don't have the talent for accents," of course.
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Re: What techniques do you use to improve TL pronunciation / accent?

Postby Beli Tsar » Fri Jan 04, 2019 3:51 pm

CompImp wrote:The problem here is you're talking about a 'bad ear' in relation to speaking. In the part of my post that you quoted, i was talking about receptive listening ability.

Sorry, I should have read it more carefully.

CompImp wrote:Now, is it that you're just 'bad' or is it that you needed to put in much, much more time than your siblings ? The number one excuse for people not being able to do things compared to others is innate talent and the time put in is always discarded.

CompImp wrote:
Beli Tsar wrote:It would be strange not to link this to my really rather terrible French pronunciation.

No, it would be rather strange not to link a lack of time spent with the language to your terrible French pronunciation. It takes tens of thousands of hours for some people to be able to imitate. You've not spent this amount of time. So you cannot possibly conclude that you're just 'bad'. Others excelling with less applied time are just quicker than you.

Surely this is a false dichotomy? I would personally link the quality of my French pronunication to both factors - a innate lack of ability to pick things up, and a lack of the very extensive practice that is required to overcome that.

Perhaps the problem is our different definitions of 'bad'. I am quite happy to call my requirement to listen for thousands of hours more audio than another person, to get to the same level, 'bad'!

I suspect that the majority of people on this forum are pretty hard-working in overcoming their weaknesses, at least in the time they have available to them. I don't think many here are looking to make excuses when they say they are weak in a particular area, even 'bad'. I certainly am not!

But we do need to be able to talk about our weaknesses in order to gain the advice and help of others here, without being told that we are merely making excuses.
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Re: What techniques do you use to improve TL pronunciation / accent?

Postby David1917 » Fri Jan 04, 2019 4:34 pm

CompImp wrote:
David1917 wrote:You said that one might need to put in "much, much more time" than others, and then called talent an excuse?

People use a lack of talent as an excuse for giving up, is what i meant. People, instead of putting in the hard hours, will simply dismiss their lack of results as being 'untalented'. They are just excuses for not putting in time.

In that case, lack of talent is just an excuse for not wanting to put in the extra time it will take them to achieve what someone more talented achieves quicker.

There is no 'i can't do X' when it comes to acquiring a good level of language. Everybody can learn to understand any language. For some it will take them 1000 hours. Their mate might take 10000. But instead of putting in 10000, they see their lack of results after 1000 and give up, citing being unable. It's not the case.


OK, that's what I suspected, and fully agree.
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Re: What techniques do you use to improve TL pronunciation / accent?

Postby rdearman » Fri Jan 04, 2019 6:35 pm

CompImp wrote:I'm just talking from experience. I thought i couldn't do it, too. I was a language failure. But i turned it round with CI + time. I think if any human on the planet with an L1 spent 10,000 hours with an L2 at a comprehensible level that it would be impossible for them not to acquire a language at a very good (C levels +) level.

What language is that? You only list Native English in your profile. I've listened to English for 54 years and I'm pretty good at it. But guess what? Even after 26 years in the UK, I still have an American accent. So. 16 hours per day * 26 years * 365 = 151,840 hours of comprehensible input, and still my pronunciation and accent haven't changed. Although this is a study of only one, I can also add my two neighbours, one French and one Italian. They have lived in the UK for 50+ years each. 50 * 16 * 365 = 292,000 hours of CI and they still have a very heavy French and Italian accent and pronunciation. So although not a comprehensive study, anecdotal evidence of 3 people seems to confirm that CI does nothing to change pronunciation and accent. So I call bollocks on this magical 10k CI to fix your pronunciation and accent.
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Re: What techniques do you use to improve TL pronunciation / accent?

Postby garyb » Fri Jan 04, 2019 7:00 pm

CompImp wrote:The problem here is you're talking about a 'bad ear' in relation to speaking. In the part of my post that you quoted, i was talking about receptive listening ability.


You quoted my post where I was clearly talking about a bad ear in relation to speaking. This whole thread is about speaking (pronunciation / accent), not listening ability apart from the part of it involved in hearing and reproducing phonemes and prosody. I have to agree with rdearman, your argument seems to just be that with enough tens of thousands of hours anyone will eventually develop a good ear, but there are counterexamples everywhere.
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Re: What techniques do you use to improve TL pronunciation / accent?

Postby rdearman » Fri Jan 04, 2019 7:23 pm

CompImp wrote:There are dozens of reasons rdearman's interpretations of himself or his neighbours aren't valid but it would just derail the thread more.

Start a new thread, list twenty-four reasons (e.g. 2 dozen).
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Re: What techniques do you use to improve TL pronunciation / accent?

Postby Kraut » Fri Jan 04, 2019 7:37 pm

Thomas Kielinger is a regular guest on BBC news shows. I have always thought that his English is really excellent. How close is he to perfection? Can natives still detect that he is foreign? German?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ea3bjp18c28
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