Are you confident when speaking a second language?
The Learning Journey
A lot of people’s first Language teacher will not have been the person they took classes from. Whether it was your parents, or TV, or maybe even a book; many of you will have had experience (to some level) with English before stepping inside a classroom.
My first experience with Portuguese was with my good friend, who would teach me all the bad words and how to use them. Within a few weeks I was capable of offending anyone in Portuguese, and we have since called each other vagabundo.
My wife, would watch Doctor Who and Harry Potter, and despite having some teachers who spoke American English, her accent today is very British, although many people here say she sounds like a “Kiwi” (someone from New Zealand, still native… good job! 😊).
No matter where you learn your English (or whatever other language you are learning), there is one key thing to remember. You often don’t learn from reproduction (repeating or copying someone else), but more from the production of your own content. You can copy time, and time, and time again but you will never truly learn until you have tried to generate something “from scratch”.
And remember “Practice makes it perfect”.
What Stands Out
The most important things I think I have learnt from my time learning, and teaching, are:
- You need to be brave enough to try, and confident enough to understand that everyone makes mistakes, and very few people will chastise you for being wrong.
- Grammar is not as important as most teachers “make out”. Most non-native speakers of English speak more correctly than a lot of native speakers. Things like “ain’t”, “he don’t”, “got ran out of town” are all totally incorrect, but I here them (and often say them) every day.
- Native speakers can’t spell… (sorry compatriots, but it’s true). I have lost count of how many times I have seen these words used in place of each other. They’re, There, Their… They mostly sound exactly the same in spoken English, but written English is far more formal than the spoken equivalent, and unfortunately these words are commonly misused by native speakers.
- I haven’t counted how many English accents there are just in the UK, but I can tell you there are at least 30 native accents in London alone. You don’t have to sound like a native for a native to understand you, but more important is you understanding the native, as there is such a wide spectrum of accents that it is almost impossible to practise all the accents. All you can do in most situations is be confident enough to listen and tell someone when you don’t understand. If they don’t explain, you probably never will.
Obviously there is no single, correct way to learn English. Everybody is different, and everyone learns in different ways. What is the most important thing is that you tailor your journey to yourself, but at the same time, don’t get “tied up” in “rules and regulations” that just simply aren’t practised even by the native speakers of the language.
What do you want?
I think, when you are starting your journey (or if you have already started, it is worth doing now) define what you want to speak English for.
If you want to travel abroad and not be left “without a leg to stand on” when talking to someone, you really don’t have to worry about getting your accent to sound like a native, or even making sure your spelling and grammar is 100%. If you can be understood, and you understand a wide range of accents (not even the whole of the USA sounds like “an American accent”) then you have done what you need to do to prepare for a successful trip.
If you want to move abroad (this is more popular nowadays with the current environment in Brazil) then the initial phase of your journey should follow the previous advice. However, the fact you are moving to 1 country makes it a little easier as you will only need to focus on more local accents to where you are moving.
The second phase though will usually require you to take some kind of test for your residency. I know the UK visa requires you to take an initial IELTS test (result of A2 or better), I believe Canada and Australia are very similar too.
When studying for more advanced tests you will need to focus more on grammar. But this is only due to the nature of the test. Also, when taking this type of test, you will usually have been speaking English for some time already. Therefore, the whole process of studying this type of thing is easier anyway because you already have a good foundation of language to build on.
It’s baby steps
Think about how you learnt your “mother tongue”:
I bet you listened to your parents for a couple of years before saying your first intelligible word. A bit later you started stringing sentences together. Your parents probably read you bedtime stories, and you may have picked these books up and imitated reading them to your parents too. By the time you were 6 I bet you could have some really good, interesting conversations… When did you study grammar?
You usually start studying grammar after you have learnt to read and write. And if you go back to what I said in the beginning, you learn properly when you produce. Listening and Reading are reproducing skills, whereas speaking and writing are producing skills. In England we don’t study grammar to the same extent as you do in Brazil.
I have always thought that people trying to be more “native” sound a little silly. I much prefer speaking to someone who has a “natural” accent because the flow of speech is easier to follow. When someone is trying to imitate native speech, it is visible to most natives as it is nowhere near as smooth as natural speech. I am not saying that you should avoid trying to sound native, but it should definitely not be a focal point for you; this will come in time anyway if you live abroad, and if you don’t live abroad it’s not that important anyway lol.
Some mistakes make it difficult to be understood. If it doesn’t affect you being understood, it might not be a mistake… it is just your accent.
