Pronunciation/Accent coaching by a proffessional - anyone tried this and has tips?

[Flickserve]

On 10/1/2022 at 4:08 PM, realmayo said:

As Flickserve says, the earlier you have this the better (although the downside: you will sound just like every other foreigner with really good Chinese!).

 

If only I did sound that good! I use Cantonese on a daily basis and it shows up very clearly if I try speaking mandarin. I only use Mandarin infrequently though.
 

Doing intensive shadowing mimicking of sentences helps in addition to an instructor - the 100-200 reps of a natively spoken recording of a single sentence. That helps give you develop the rhythm of the sentence and stresses in certain areas that adds to the flow of using words to communicate.

 

Having a teacher that can demonstrate the sounds and tongue positions should be much easier now. When I started, bandwidth speed over the internet was very inconsistent for video and basically, I could only have voice conversations to learn pronunciation. Maybe that’s partly why I needed a lot of time. 

[Flickserve]

On 10/6/2022 at 5:07 PM, malazann said:

Reading random short sentences out of context is probably a decent pratice excercise

I find this very hard to do correctly and it’s not exactly the same as communicating. You don’t speak to a person by reading a written sentence. For me, mimicking is much better (trying not to have the written sentence at hand) and I make reading out loud a small part of the practice time. 

[malazann]

On 10/7/2022 at 4:41 AM, Jan Finster said:

Have you had proper Chinese teachers (with a university degree in teaching Chinese) or "only" community teachers on Italki?

 

I think i've only had one but pronunciation was never discussed in detail. I've mainly used italki for cheap conversation practice this year, but I'll give it another shot. I'll look for people who specify working on pronunciation

[malazann]

On 10/7/2022 at 4:58 AM, Flickserve said:

I find this very hard to do correctly and it’s not exactly the same as communicating. You don’t speak to a person by reading a written sentence. For me, mimicking is much better (trying not to have the written sentence at hand) and I make reading out loud a small part of the practice time. 

 

I figure if they can understand what I am saying, with no context, then at least my pronunciation is ok? And work on it from there? I agree 100% though about reading out loud is not the best way to work on pronunciation. shadowing is probably ideal. I really need to do that consistently 

[abcdefg]

On 10/8/2022 at 12:08 AM, malazann said:

I figure if they can understand what I am saying, with no context, then at least my pronunciation is ok?

 

Understandability has been my number one goal from day one. In tricky situations, I still try to supply as much context as possible. 

[Jan Finster]

On 10/8/2022 at 3:03 PM, abcdefg said:

On 10/8/2022 at 7:08 AM, malazann said:

I figure if they can understand what I am saying, with no context, then at least my pronunciation is ok?

 

Understandability has been my number one goal from day one. In tricky situations, I still try to supply as much context as possible. 

 

I agree. In language learning forums people obesess about native-like pronunciation. However, fluency and being easily understood should be the goal. There are so many different accents/dialects in China, a fluent foreigner, who gets the tones right is likely easier to understand to someone from Beijing as someone from a Yunnan village.

When I worked in Essex (UK), my British colleagues could not understand a new colleague from Glasgow, but would understand us foreigners (from Germany, Spain, Portugal, Poland) just fine. It was hilarious.

[Flickserve]

On 10/8/2022 at 1:08 PM, malazann said:

I figure if they can understand what I am saying, with no context, then at least my pronunciation is ok?

Yes. But why not use that time on shadowing?

 

My life was changed when I discovered an italki tutor who made a video speaking about at least thirty languages. Some of the comments on the video were very complimentary about her accent in various languages. I booked her for a lesson - she is native fluent in mandarin and French. I booked her mainly to discuss language learning technique rather than the language per se. She explained to me it was all about rote learning through shadowing and mimicking. It completely blew my mind at the time but it made sense.

 

Later, I found Olle Kjellin’s technique. Type his name in Google and you’ll find various references https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/8213-near-native-foreign-accents/
 

My impression is if you’re going to read out loud early on, you’re going to get a staccato robot like output in your speech (with some second language mistakes) , rather like how many Chinese people speak English. You miss a lot of how the language is expressed rhythmically and naturally, even with having better tones.

 

For my own experience, I found the reading out loud very frustrating. You don’t feel a sense of achievement. But you do feel you’re making progress with shadowing process. I went through intensive listening for a month and a half with sentences from Growing Up With Chinese trying to work out the sentences. That actually took me quite far because after that, Chinese people started saying I had improved.

 

After the shadowing exercises paying attention to tones, 100+ times on a single sentence, my output improved a lot. Not perfect but when you come to make your own sentences talking to people in real time, parts of what you shadowed come into your speech making it much more understandable. If you’re doing a mainly reading out loud technique, most parts of your speaking will be unnatural- the listener has to work harder. The base material I used was from “Growing Up with Chinese”. 

 

Now, people say I speak fairly well. Actually, I am only saying four words in a row and then pausing to think of what to say next but that sequence of four words comes out quite well. It’s enough to make mandarin speakers assume I can understand a lot more. 

 

 

[malazann]

On 10/9/2022 at 11:25 AM, Flickserve said:

My impression is if you’re going to read out loud early on, you’re going to get a staccato robot like output in your speech (with some second language mistakes) , rather like how many Chinese people speak English. You miss a lot of how the language is expressed rhythmically and naturally, even with having better tones.

 

yeah i've always been aware of the importance of cadence and pauses in speech. Shadowing is definitely the best way to pick that up deliberately. Appreciate the advice. There's some 10 odd weeks left in the year so I'll get started!

 

On 10/9/2022 at 12:03 AM, abcdefg said:

Understandability has been my number one goal from day one. In tricky situations, I still try to supply as much context as possible. 

Understandability is definitely the primary goal. I just want conversation with me to be easy, and not burden the other person too much with being overly-conscious with the language level they are using. I'd rather have good cadence/flow/fluency then good pronunciation I guess? But ideally both haha

[abcdefg]

On 10/9/2022 at 12:00 AM, malazann said:

yeah i've always been aware of the importance of cadence and pauses in speech.

 

Extremely important to being understood on the "first pass," the first time the sentence comes out of your mouth.  Cadence, pauses, patterns of emphasis. If you stress the wrong part of a sentence, all else being correct, you are sometimes still met with  that all-too-familiar blank look. 

[bmurray]

I work with a speech language pathologist on to improve my Mandarin pronunciation. Compared with regular tutors, she is far more effective at improving my Mandarin pronunciation. 
 

Many tutors noted my pronunciation was "wrong" and gave basic tips on tongue positions, but were unable to give me detailed feedback on how to improve. My SLP transcribed my speech production into IPA and highlighted the specific aspects that differed from standard Mandarin. She then gave me exercises designed to help me learn to understand and remediate my specific pronunciation issues.

 

Most importantly, my SLP helped me prioritize my pronunciation issues. She highlighted aspects Chinese native speakers would find unintelligible, instead of merely awkward and irritating. For example, my overly-centralized vowels were a far more serious issue than my non-synchronic combination of various dialectal variations. 

[Moshen]

Quote

For example, my overly-centralized vowels were a far more serious issue than my non-synchronic combination of various dialectal variations. 

 

Could you please translate the following terms into plain English:

- overly-centralized vowels

- non-synchronic combination

- various dialectal variations

 

[abcdefg]

On 6/8/2023 at 10:08 AM, bmurray said:

I work with a speech language pathologist on to improve my Mandarin pronunciation.

 

May I ask where you are doing this? In China? 

 

Welcome to the forum! I hope you will contribute more.

[bmurray]

On 6/8/2023 at 9:28 AM, Moshen said:

Could you please translate the following terms into plain English:

- overly-centralized vowels

Vowels are (in part) defined by tongue position. A vowel is centralized if the tongue closer to the center of the mouth, as opposed to at vertical or horizontal extremes. 

 

On 6/8/2023 at 9:28 AM, Moshen said:

- non-synchronic combination

- various dialectal variations

Different aspects of my pronunciation were more aligned with different regional dialects. My overall pronunciation was not consistent with any given regional dialect, so native speakers found it irritating. Think, for example, of someone flipping between British English and American English on a word-by-word basis, without any consistency.

[bmurray]

On 6/8/2023 at 11:03 AM, abcdefg said:

May I ask where you are doing this? In China? 

Both myself and my SLP live in the same region of North America. Licensing requirements mean that SLPs are generally unable to offer their services across jurisdictional boundaries.

[Ledu]

My recommendation is to think COMMUNITY > COMMERCIALIZATION. 

 

If you think about community and how you can serve it, you will get a greater ROI and for less money. More money spent doesn't actually always mean more impactful. It also does not always mean professional. You could just be a target of a marketing team.  

 

The University of Melbourne has over 15,000 Chinese students. 

 

Places you could volunteer or join:
Universities
Community Colleges
Chinese Language Schools (for Australian Born Chinese)
Chinese Churches
The Confucious Institute

 

That would be more along the lines of immersion. You could also replicate that by doing flashcards (29.99 on Pleco, basic bundle), immersion through video and audio (youtube etc).  Anki is also free but I prefer Pleco as I don't have to waste too much time making cards. I remember spending hours making the perfect Anki cards. With Pleco, I just study or make simple sentence cards. While people may shame me for using flashcards, there is constant commercialization in learning Chinese but not as much in learning Japanese-- largely free, open-source and interest based not level based.  Sure you could get on a flight and study in Beijing with a private teacher for awhile but I think you will get further in Australia and also studying independently. 

 

Cons of a Private Teacher:
- Not as professional as you would think.
- Only experience teaching who are their consistent market (begginers).
- May just become like a friend and so become less professional.
- Your teacher will understand you but the rest of Chinese speakers won't.
- Native speakers don't just speak Standard Mandarin. 
- You become part of a sort of artificial language world (You and your teacher).
- They will talk about largely whatever you are paying them to, but native speakers may not truly be interested or may be offended. So thus, you are not actually learning about Chinese culture.

 

Edited June 9, 2023 at 10:42 PM by Ledu
Pleco price was wrong

[Flickserve]

On 6/8/2023 at 11:08 PM, bmurray said:

Most importantly, my SLP helped me prioritize my pronunciation issues. She highlighted aspects Chinese native speakers would find unintelligible, instead of merely awkward and irritating. For example, my overly-centralized vowels were a far more serious issue than my non-synchronic combination of various dialectal variations. 

This would be very interesting to watch as an observer. One of my favourite apologies is to say, 我的中文很糟糕。A lot of mandarin speakers say my mandarin pronunciation is Hong Kong style but don’t elaborate which part of the speech makes it sound like that. 

 

 

Going on back to the main point of the thread, I sometimes meet with a language partner in person. One day she said she hired someone help her English pronunciation. To be honest, her spoken English is fine for work. She recorded some of the lesson and let me hear it. The lesson comprised of her reading some words out loud and then the tutor giving the correct pronunciation.

 

When she read out loud, there was a significant deterioration in her pronunciation. I asked her not to read but just listen and copy - dissociate from the written word entirely. I also asked her not to have a mental image of the word in her head - just focus on the sound and copying the sound. She managed a significant improvement in her pronunciation in only a few attempts. 
 

Bottom line is reading out loud may not be the optimal exercise to improve pronunciation. It introduces an extra process which scrambles and confuses your output.