What do esl students say about their accents

Most people do! However, English is spoken in many other countries worldwide either as a native language or a second language. The other approach explains the difference between accent and dialect in that a dialect refers to the way people speak their native language and an accent refers to the way someone speaks a foreign language.

For example, a Spanish person speaks English with a Spanish accent, but an Australian person speaks the Australian dialect. The common opinion is that while different dialects have their unique slang words, slang is not categorized as a dialect. Slang is simply informal words used by a certain group of people or within a certain community, whereas a dialect is a more complex language system.

You definitely should include some activities in your ESL classes that expose your students to different accents. A group of multilingual English language students practicing their English between classes. Statistics show that the most spoken language worldwide is English, with almost two billion people being able to speak it, of whom only million are native speakers.

This means that your students are much more likely to speak English with someone for whom English is a second or foreign language than with a native English speaker. Due to this, your students who have not been exposed to different accents and dialects might have trouble understanding people, depending on where they are and who they are talking to.

Keeping that in mind, if your students are learning English in order to work at an international company or travel abroad, you might want to be aware of their goals and perhaps start practicing listening to different kinds of English accents, especially the ones your students will be dealing with.

If you want to get into dialect analysis with your students, make sure that this will match their language-learning goals and that it will benefit them in the future. Some suggest that you should focus on teaching your own accent, whether you are a native or non-native speaker.

You may also tell your students that there are many other English accents around the world and that you will expose them to some through the course materials, the Internet, and movies, and they can try them out too.

The current study investigates the … Expand. From the perspective of World Englishes i. Nevertheless, learners … Expand. Judging the Immigrant Accents and Attitudes. Spoken language as a means of communication contains huge amounts of information apart from the linguistic message that is conveyed. It is often the first channel of interaction between people and … Expand.

View 2 excerpts, cites background. The present study investigated the perceptions and attitudes of two groups each of ESL teachers and students in the United States regarding World Englishes WE pronunciations before and after … Expand. Highly Influenced. View 7 excerpts, cites background and results. Pronunciation is viewed as a difficult part in the English learning process of ELLs. This study aimed at exploring the factors that influence the pronunciation of ELLs. In this qualitative research, … Expand.

Nonlanguage factors affecting undergraduates' judgments of nonnative English-speaking teaching assistants. In response to dramatic changes in the demographics of graduate education, considerable effort is being deveoted to training teaching assistants who are nonnative speakers of English NNSTAs.

Three … Expand. One of the chief goals of most second language learners is to be understood in their second language by a wide range of interlocutors in a variety of contexts.

Although a nonnative accent can … Expand. Accent, Intelligibility, and Comprehensibility. Evidence from Four L1s. This study was designed to extend previous research on the relationships among intelligibility, perceived comprehensibility, and accentedness. Over half the respondents felt that pronunciation played a role in their communication problems, yet when asked what their pronunciation difficulties were, many were unable to answer.

Those who did identify problems tended to focus on a small set of salient segmental units that generally have little effect on intelligibility. When asked whether they had been discriminated against because of accent, two thirds said no, but when asked if people would respect them more if they pronounced English well, the majority agreed.

In light of the students' comments, recommendations are made for pronunciation instruction guided by intelligibility rather than salience; it is also suggested that the politics of accent and bias be explored with ESL students.

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