I forgot to include .. those do not communicate with L2 students on a regular basis ... .  As ESL teachers, we listen to a variety of L2 accents and pronunciations on a daily basis, but many in the "outside world" don't have the patience and/or the exposure to L2 speaking that ESL instructors do, and one of our major goals is to prepare our students to do well in English in their new Englieh speaking country.

________________________________

From: englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov on behalf of Muro, Andres
Sent: Wed 8/22/2007 8:57 AM
To: The Adult English Language Learners Discussion List
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 1703] Re: Accent Reduction -IdeasforSpecialTopicsDis...



Say what?!  Now, I am totally confused. What does not communicating with L2 speakers have to do with using 'wanna' instead of want to?

 

 

 

________________________________

From: englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Steinbacher, Mikal
Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2007 8:55 AM
To: The Adult English Language Learners Discussion List
Subject: RE: [EnglishLanguage 1701] Re: Accent Reduction - IdeasforSpecialTopicsDis...

 

Not usually, but those who do not communicate with non-native speakers often are.  Isn't good communication what we are after?  

 

________________________________

From: englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov on behalf of Muro, Andres
Sent: Tue 8/21/2007 2:33 PM
To: The Adult English Language Learners Discussion List
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 1701] Re: Accent Reduction - IdeasforSpecialTopicsDis...

Y? were u confused?

 

________________________________

From: englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Steinbacher, Mikal
Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2007 1:57 PM
To: The Adult English Language Learners Discussion List
Subject: RE: [EnglishLanguage 1696] Re: Accent Reduction - IdeasforSpecialTopics Dis...

 

And eliminate reductions  ... such as "wanna".  I teach my students reductions and what they mean, and then tell them to NOT use them because reductions + accent = confusion for the listener!

 

________________________________

From: englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov on behalf of Muro, Andres
Sent: Tue 8/21/2007 4:40 AM
To: The Adult English Language Learners Discussion List; englishlanguage at nifl.gov
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 1696] Re: Accent Reduction - IdeasforSpecialTopics Dis...

 

Appreciate any ideas (feasible) about changing the world.

 

Try to help them acquire fluency in reading, writing and listening skills. You may also wanna try to help them enunciate as clearly as possible. Who cares about accents. As someone else said, the students most likely will have the accent of their own cultural group. 

 

Proper enunciation and accent reduction are different things. The former relates to intelligibility, the later refers to elimination of cultural traits.  Talking about accent reduction gives students the idea that their cultural group doesn't' speak properly and that they should sound like Ted Koppel, Peter Jennings, or Carol Kouric, who allegedly don't have accents. It sounds like most people wanna focus on the former. As long as they don't sound like W it's ok. 

 

Andres

 

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