Hi Angela,
I think that more research is needed into this concept of identity. I've had a
different
experience with Spanish. I first learnt in Madrid, and thought I was quite
competent.
However, when I moved to Cadiz, I was consistently given 3 drinks when I asked
for 2 in
bars. The problem was a different local accent - so, I learnt to drop the 's'
off 'dos' and got
the right number of drinks. Later I moved to Mexico, and adapted my accent
again. And
once more in Peru. Being back in England, I've had more contact with people from
Spain,
who tell me my accent is Mexican. I don't have much urge to change it (although
I do try
to make the appropriate grammatical changes), but I do find that I 'accommodate'
to the
'th' sounds quite a lot.
The basis of the situation is the same I suppose. My 'Mexican identity' is
important to me,
and I won't remove that completely from my accent, though I will adapt for the
purpose of
intelligibility.
For teaching, the challenge is then to work out what is important and what
isn't.

Alex


--- In iatefl_pronsig@..., sprottes@... wrote:
>
> Yes, I think that's exactly it
> Angela
> "pronsig_mod" <pronsig_mod@...> schrieb:
> --- In iatefl_pronsig@..., "sprottes" <sprottes@>
> wrote:
> >
> > In my experience , both as teacher and foreigner (I live in Germany) ,
> > however good your command of a language, you only feel really at one
> > with yourself in your native language.In role playing exercises at a
> > seminar, in which I took part in English, German and French, people
> > commented on how differently my personality came across in the various
> > languages.
> >
> > As regards Standard BBC pronunciation or similar, I think it depends
> > who you are teaching and more to the point for what purpose. As a
> > teacher trainer, my students obviously need to be good models for their
> > future pupils-whereas a businessman needs intelligible communication
> > skills but does not necessarily need to be so accurate. In my own case,
> > now I no longer need to impress in German,I notice that my near-native
> > German pronunciation has markedly more British elements than it used to
> > have. A similar thing has also happened to a Spanish friend.
> >
> > angela Sprotte
> >
> Hi Angela,
> I've experienced this phenomenon of personalities coming across
> differently when
> speaking different languages too. I'm not sure though that you're only
> really yourself in
> your first language. I think part of language learning is that speaking
> different languages
> develops and expands your personality - language learning can be about
> personal growth.
> I think that pronunciation teaching at its best is about helping
> learners to find and develop
> their voice in a second language.
> The interesting thing there is that you don't really need to work to any
> standard model -
> instead it's about developing awareness of articulation, of how one's
> own voice sounds,
> and how to gain greater control over it, and, of course, of developing
> skills in perception
> of how people express things in different languages.
> It's interesting that you say that once you passed a point of needing to
> impress in German
> your accent became more British again. That seems to be to do with
> identity. You are
> British, and your identity has changed from a skilled learner of German
> (for whom a near-
> native accent was significant mark of proficiency) to a skilled user of
> German, whose L1
> identity is important.
> Does that fit with your perception?
>
> Alex.
>