Advance learners, how did you get rid of your accent from your mother tongue?

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On 7/24/2018 at 10:30 AM, mungouk said:

Has anyone had success with memorising passages to practice with, maybe poems? 

 

I did this with a tutor a couple years ago who was an opera singer by profession (teaching Chinese was just her side-job.) She found me lots of materials on the Chinese internet that were read by famous people, actors and such. Some pieces (poems) were even set to music. Practiced together a lot and then I did it on my own as homework. (I'm not a singer by any stretch of the imagination.) 

 

Felt strange at first, but eventually decided it was helpful mainly because it made me really emphasize details of pronunciation, pitch and phrasing that I might have just glossed over otherwise. She moved away eventually and I no longer remember much of what I learned with her. Hopefully some sunk in and has remained at an unconscious level. 

 

It was fun because it wasn't just the same old language lessons like I'd had so many times before. She was an innovative teacher with an unusual skill set.

[Guest realmayo]

This is an interesting, older thread on the topic: https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/8213-near-native-foreign-accents/

Especially because of the link to this guy: http://olle-kjellin.com/SpeechDoctor/ProcLP98.html

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This paper will assert that it is surprisingly simple for adults to achieve native-like pronunciation in a second language within only a few minutes of practice, using a method inspired by perception physiology and first language acquisition. The findings are empirical, not experimental. However, ample support is found in the literature, though be it often indirectly, as relevant or equivalent test situations have not been created