Last year I received an email from Jean-Yves. He explained
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one of the tricks he used to teach himself English. I was fascinated with his
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because it was something I had been thinking about for a long time.
Here"s what Jean-Yves told me, "As a French English-learner, I trained myself to speak French with an English
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." The stronger the better! Even though it might sound
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, this trick was a great way for me to improve my pronunciation, not only at a word level but at a phrase level too. It provided me with a simple approach to feeling the "song" of natural spoken English.
Then I shifted to English phrases,
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between both languages. The more
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the better. I realized that French words had to be distorted and twisted to sound English. Whereas English words were made to sound English!
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, I tried to speak English with a harsh French accent. It made me realized how awkward the English phrases sounded without adequate pronunciation, and thus how much I had
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.
As a side effect, not only did this help me to improve my pronunciation, but it made spoken English on TV or in DVDs easier to understand, just because I would
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pronounce the words approximately the same way.
Jean-Yves learned how to speak French with an English accent! This helped him improve his English pronunciation and it helped him understand the
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of English.
This is fascinating to me
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I always tell my students to pay attention to the way native English speakers speak their language. Do English speakers speak slowly and add strange stress to words Does it sound like their mouths are very relaxed or tight Do they have trouble with certain sounds in your language This gives you
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about how to speak English.
My French pronunciation also improved when I started paying attention to the way French speakers spoke English. A French speaker has a
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accent in English. A French speaker often doesn"t stress any syllable in an English word. He also keeps his jaw very
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, so his jaw doesn"t move as much as an English speaker"s does. The sounds he makes are very short and tight
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the relaxed way that I speak English. I need to remember this when I speak French.