雅思口语的学习建议_雅思英语口语_雅思英语-查字典英语网

雅思口语的学习建议

　　Part of the misconception stems from ignorance of the distinction between pronunciation and accent. Pronunciation involves the stress, rhythm, intonation, and phonetic sounds that facilitate communication. An accent is the distinguishable set of sounds that derives from cultural or regional phonetic patterns. Accents are essentially habits formed at a very early age and very difficult to change after the age of six. This has been verified13 by researchers who studied the tongue and mouth positions of Israeli children at an early age of 5-6, and find that even after heavy immersion14 in American English for about 10 years, their mouth and tongue positions change very little when speaking, and thus their accents change only slightly. In other words, forget about trying to change your accent in a year or two, it is just not going to happen. Pronunciation can be changed and improved. Accents are entrenched15 and need not be changed.

　　There is no shortage of superb English speakers and writers in my native country, Canada, who have excellent pronunciation, but heavy accents from their countries of origin. In fact, two great Indo-Canadian writers Michael Ondaatje and Rohinton Misty both have slight non-Canadian accents in English, but are Booker Prize16 winners. Do we say that their English is substandard, because they have accents? No, it would be absurd to make such a suggestion since their pronunciation is excellent and no one has any trouble understanding them. As I mentioned earlier, pronunciation is not the same thing as an accent.