Language Training: Accent perfection
As SETranslations offers English courses to Professionals and the Public Education Sector throughout Spain our students regularly ask about travelling abroad to perfect their accent and language skills. As we have heard different experiences from various students (good and bad), we would like to ask of any recommendations.
Best thing to do is an immersion course. These tend to be expensive so better still if you have the time and the guts go and live abroad, work, immerse yourself in the culture of that country. After one year your fluency and confidence will increase so much. However, to change an accent is going to take a lot more than a year.
I agree with Stefania!
Totally agree with you there Stefania. I have been living here in the States for well over 10 years now and even though I have an American Accent there is still a note of my roots, especially with r’s and v’s.
In my honest opinion accents are always there, at times, noticeable in some words even if you have spent years living in an English speaking country
In my case, I am biligual: my mother is Italian and my father Australian, I don´t consider I have a specific accent or that is what people say. Although I have preference for the Italian language you would hardly notice any accent revealing my nationality.
I guess some people are born with language skills, that easy. If you live with the language, day after day, it shouldn´t be any problem with accents.
Accents are part of people´s way of speaking and they are like credit cards, personal and untransferable, however there are ways to hide your accent or to improve it if you are really worried about it (for me language structure is far more important), for instance, watch TV in the target language, speak with native speakers and spend some time in the country and you will see results
I agree with Johny when he says that accents are such a personal thing and that people shouldn´t feel ashamed of their accents. Keeping your grammar to a good level and having a great deal of vocabulary is what really matters to make yourself understood, specially in writing
The accent perfection can be achieved through constant practice and effort as long as you are living in a proper language environment. Otherwise you native accent will follow you everywhere. Some people have language skills but, in general, accents give you away
As I see it, the accent perfection comes through a lot of practise and effort when speaking considering you are not a native speaker of that language. Even bilinguals sometimes have an accent in one of the languages.
I consider people shouldn´t worry too much about accent perfection as long as they can be understood. The most important thing is the grammar and, of course, an accent that can be understood easily but perfection is almost impossible in my opinion
That’s an interesting article. I just wondered if you could tell me where to find more info on this topic ?