Monday, May 18, 2009

Pronunciation

When preparing your oral exams or speeches, make sure you know how to pronounce all the words. Click here to listen to the pronunciation of the words which are new to you, then repeat it till you feel it sounds right.

Correct pronunciation is probably one of the most important things to make oneself understood when speaking English; accent, however, is not something that you should worry about. Very few people actually manage to speak a language like native speakers (I can only think of our colleage Pili, right now); the rest of us can barely hide our accent even in our own language!. Remember what happens when we travel to other regions in Spain: as soon as we say the first word, people immediately say,"You are from Galicia, aren´t you?" That´s because of our accent.

Here´s a video that shows what speakers from very different origins sound like when they speak English: Amy Walker does a little tour of 21 accents ranging from different places in the UK and Ireland, Italy, Germany, Czech Republic, Russia, France, Australia, New Zealand, and around North America. If you close your eyes and listen to her, you´ll get the feeling you are listening to all those people.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...