yourself. It wil depend on who is watching you.
That depends on your situation and what you want to do with the language. Writing and speaking are not as important at the beginner stage, when you are not yet used to the language. At that stage you need lots of repetitive input. However, as you start to feel the need to express yourself, writing and speaking activities wil become key to moving to output, even if you are not surrounded by native speakers.
Beginner learners need only one or two short (15-30 minutes) one-on-one sessions per week with a native- speaker. Writing is not necessary at that stage.
Intermediate and advanced learners should try to write at least once a week, join a discussion with a native speaker and 3-4 other learners, once or twice a week, and have a 15 to 30 minute one-on-one session with a tutor once a month.
On the other hand, if you have the opportunity, or the need, to use the language in real meaningful ways, you should take maximum advantage.
A recent study investigated whether giving learners an opportunity for oral output has any positive effect on the L2 learners' acquisition of a grammatical form. Twenty -four adult ESL
learners were randomly assigned to one of three groups: an output group, which engaged in a picture description task that involved input comprehension and output production; a non-output group, which engaged in a picture sequencing task that required input comprehension only; and a placebo control group. The two treatment groups were exposed to the same aural input for the same amount of time. Learning was assessed by means of a pre-test and a post-test consisting of production and reception parts. The results indicated that, contrary to our expectations, the output group failed to outperform the non-output group. On the contrary, it was the non-output group that showed greater overall gains in learning. A careful post-hoc re-examination of the treatment tasks revealed that the output task failed to engage learners in the syntactic processing that is necessary to trigger L2 learning, while the task for the non-output group appeared to promote better form-meaning mapping.
Source:
Yukiko Izumi and Shinichi Izumi
Investigating the Effects of Oral Output on the Learning of Relative Clauses in English: Issues in the Psycholinguistic Requirements for Effective Output Tasks
Do not worry about whether you pronounce like a native speaker or not. By al means try to imitate native speaker pronunciation as closely as you can. It can be fun to try to do so. I wil provide some hints on how to do so below. But do not worry if you do not achieve this goal. This may sound like contradictory advice. What I mean is that you can aim to sound like a native speaker but should be satisfied with yourself if you can communicate clearly and effectively. You should not have the slightest sense of being inadequate if you do not achieve this 100% native speaker like pronunciation.
It is better to use words and phrases like a native speaker, and pronounce with an accent, than to pronounce like a native speaker, but have phrasing that is not natural. So work hardest on your choice of words and phrases.
Having said that I offer the fol owing advice on pronunciation. First of al choose so meone whose voice and pronunciation you like. Listen repetitively to that same person. Imitate that person as much as you can. Overload your brain with that person's voice and intonation.
Get a hold of the text of what that person is saying or transcribe it. Now read it out loud many times imitating the person you are listening to. Record yourself. Identify the differences in pronunciation and intonation between yourself and the native speaker. You wil gradual y get better and better at doing this.
Isolate the vowel sounds and consonant sounds that you are not satisfied with. Work very hard on saying those sounds. Record yourself and compare yourself to a native speaker. Do the same with intonation.
I think there are two issues with accent. First of al , can you be understood? If your accent is so 'foreign' that you are difficult to understand, you need to work to improve it. Otherwise, an accent reflects your personality, and a noticeable but easily understood 'foreign' accent can be either of little importance, or, in some cases, charming.
I admit that the closer you are to the native accent, the less likely you are to attract attention to yourself. A lack of accent is usually easier on the ears of the listener, but only at first. Ultimately, if the conversation continues, the foreign accent becomes less and less important.
What does become important is what you have to say, how you say it, and what you convey to your listeners about the kind of person you are.
In that regard, what you have within you, and your ability to use words and phrases effectively, is much more important than your accent, in the long run. So, as a language learner, put more emphasis on words and phrases and the natural use of the language and do not worry too much about accent.
There is another aspect of accent, and that is the fact that an accent can identify a native speaker in terms of regional origin and even, in some societies, class. I see no reason why people would want to hide their regional origins, so I see no reason to change one's regional accent. In so far as accents identified with class are concerned, this is real y not an issue in Canada where everyone more or less speaks with the same accent. It may be a bigger issue in some other countries, like the United Kingdom.
I notice that the old 'Oxford accent' or 'Queen's English' is much less common than before, although I must confess that I real y like hearing it. More and more people from southern England seem to speak with an 'estuary English' accent, which is strongly influenced by the London accent. It appears that class distinctions are less important than before, even in the UK.
But I do not know that for sure.
In the US, there is controversy about whether the way that many Black Americans speak is a language (sometimes cal ed Ebonics) or not. However, I was recently told, by a leading Black American educator, that most Black parents would like their children to speak mainstream English, at least outside of the home. There, I believe, the issue is not so much the accent, which is real y a Southern accent, but the use of words. It is quite possible to have a very erudite way of using the language and stil speak with an accent that is similar to that of a 'rapper.'
So my view is that phrasing and vocabulary are more important than accent in al situations.
Very few language learners do not want to emulate the pronunciation of some native speaker group. That is the model, whether it is achieved or not. Very fe w native speakers of a language do not react more positively, at least initial y, to a person speaking in a familiar or native accent, even though in time this initial impression can be overcome.
So it is not necessarily helpful to pretend that learners do not want to reduce their accent nor that it is unimportant. It is useful to tell learners that they should not be unduly preoccupied about their accent, but to suggest that it does not matter is not, in my view, a good idea.
One of the best ways to reduce an accent is to listen repeatedly to a limited amount of content. Repeating along, with an emphasis on rhythm and intonation is particularly helpful. It can also be helpful to memorize short paragraphs and repeat them often. And of course it is important to relax and not worry about one's accent even as
