This past week we had the expected but feared Slang speech in the Listening/Speaking's class, we all investigated and prepared our speeches and it was the first moment that I got the opportunity to hear each one of my classmate to talk for more than three minutes, speaking fluently and expressing their ideas. In class, we answer questions and talk about various topics but this time I enjoyed so much to listen to the different accents of my classmates.
After this, I realize that even though I always focus and worry about imitating an American accent, that is not completely necessary to make myself understand, whats the purpose of having an American accent if your pronunciation is wrong.
I have to accept that I will always have a different accent just for the fact that English is not my first language instead Spanish is. Furthermore, my perspective as a teacher should change as well, I have been teaching my students listening lessons only using American accent, what would they do if they listen to a British or Jamaican person, for sure they will nervous and may think that is a different language, just because I didn't take in consideration the importance to get familiar with different accents because English is an international language and many people from many countries speak English.
I have 3 Saudi, 1 Hindu, and some Panamanian fellow classmates in the class and I have discovered how beautiful it is to listen to so many different accents and be able to understand them it is wonderful. From now on I will focus more on my pronunciation and stop worry to sound like an American native speaker.
This seems like an excellent observation and excellent decision. For the most part, although accents reveal that we may not be native speakers, they are so incredibly difficult to eliminate; few are ever able to do it, so it seems like an unreasonable expectation to have for ourselves or our Ss.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. Ultimately pronunciation is more important, and as long as communication is not impeded, accent really isn't a big problem. I suspect having an accent causes a lot of unnecessary embarrassment for many learners.