Ask HN: time-efficient ways to improve English for non-natives?

Re:Ask HN: time-efficient ways to improve English for non-na... by Vargas on Monday October 18, 2010 @08:14AM (#1803120)

Spaniard in London with the same problem here.

The BEST on-line material is BBC's "The sound of English" http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/pr... Just watch it and practise with a mirror many, many, many times and you will improve.

If you are willing to spend some money, I recommend doing an elocution "soften your accent" course. I did it a couple of years ago (sorry, don't remember the name of the company, it was close to St. Pancras Station) and I improved a lot.

Pay special attention to "intonation patterns". Even if you make every individual sound right, natives will have trouble understanding you. You have to make all sounds in a sentence flow together in one of the few predefined sound patterns found in British English in order to get understood. Just changing the intonation pattern changes the meaning, even in the same phrase.

Example: 'I like YOUR new blue dress' vs. 'I like your new BLUE dress' vs. 'I like your new blue DRESS'.

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Re:Ask HN: time-efficient ways to improve English for non-na... by andreasklinger on Monday October 18, 2010 @09:03AM (#1803291)

Found one that looks interesting - maybe it helps other HN users as well:

http://www.londonspeechworkshop.com/our-courses/dates-and-pr...

Do you have any other recommendations maybe?

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Re:Ask HN: time-efficient ways to improve English for non-na... by Vargas on Monday October 18, 2010 @09:53AM (#1803478)

It took some fiddling with my old email archive but I found it, Joe Hudson was my teacher:

http://www.pronunciationlondon.co.uk/joe.html http://www.anenglishaccent.com/author.html

He is very good. We spent half of every session learning 'high level' stuff (phrases, paragraphs) and the other half practising 'low level' elocution (where to place your tongue and your lips for each sound).

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Re:Ask HN: time-efficient ways to improve English for non-na... by andreasklinger on Monday October 18, 2010 @11:14AM (#1803768)

thanks contacted him.

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Re:Ask HN: time-efficient ways to improve English for non-na... by andreasklinger on Monday October 18, 2010 @08:56AM (#1803253)

Thanks a lot for your feedback.

I really like the idea of the "soften your accent" course.

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