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Saturday 25 December 2010

Pentingkah untuk kita belajar accent /slang?

Itu semua terpulang. Pada saya yang penting ialah untuk dapat bertutur dengan elok dan dapat difahami untuk urusan seharian. Ramai mereka yang native speaker boleh faham bahasa Inggeris yang dicakap oleh orang Malaysia. Untuk belajar accent/slang mereka adalah pilihan. Yang penting pronunciation anda betul. Kebanyakkan orang pilih untuk belajar accent reduction, mengurangkan accent bahasa sendiri.

Sekiranya anda nak belajar, ini antara caranya:
Practice your vowel sounds. English has 20 vowel sounds (a,e,i,o and u) but about 26 consonant sounds.
Listen to and repeat examples of words spoken by a native English speaker. You need to identify an example accent that you want to imitate.
Make sure that you open your mouth wide enough for the sound to come out.
Practise the 'th' sound. 'th' is pronounced behind the teeth, where most languages pronounce 'd' and 't'. It's not achived by sticking your tongue between your teeth.
Stress the correct syllable if there is more than one syllable in the word. English is a stress-based language.
Speak slowly. Finish one word before you start the next. Remember to say the final consonant in a word.

Tips:
-Losing your accent is really learning to speak using a non-regionally specific dialect.
-When learning any accent, listening to and imitating a native speaker is the most important step and fastest way to learn. Remember that when you were young you learnt a language by listening and then repeating the words while imitating the accent.

-A large part of learning a new accent is learning the sounds, rhythm, stress, pitch, intonation and structure of that accent. To do this you need to ‘attune’ your ear to the particular accent.
-As a child your ability for the ear to process different frequencies of sound is expanded, enabling you to distinguish and reproduce the sounds of the languages that surrounds you. To effectively learn a new accent you must expand the ability of your ear by listening over and over to examples of the accent.
-As you expand the ability of the ear, speaking becomes an automatism. When the ear can ‘hear’ a sound the mouth has a better chance of producing it.
-In English most of the consonants are paired, i.e., they are made the same way in the mouth. The only difference is that one of the pair is made without switching on the voice in the throat (making sound in the throat), and one is made with voice activated, e.g., /p/ and /b/
-Rhythm is about timing within a phrase or sentence. This mainly equates to where we place the strong or weak stress in a sentence. When learning a new accent it is also important to learn where the stress is placed.
-Try about 15 minutes of practice every day for a few weeks.
-Watch English TV with English subtitles.
-Learn local expressions. Learn what words are used frequently in your area to describe things (e.g. loads vs. lots vs. heaps)

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