Friday, 15 January 2016

If you want to sound like a native speaker, copy a native speaker

Well, the statement that the title to this blog makes is entirely logical to me! I love presenting this statement to my students and getting them to think deeper. I always try to make my students remember that they’ve probably all imitated native speakers of their own language, both intentionally and unintentionally, through the years and that is why they sound like native speakers in their own language. I’m pretty sure that everyone, at one time or another, tried to memorise and rehearse the words of a cool actor, politician, writer or a singer etc... and tried to use them to sound, cool, intelligent or even just romantic when they uttered these words to other people. We’ve all perfected and personalised these utterances to make them our own. This is simply the way for us to discover and express ourselves in our own language. And this is the secret to artfully discover and express ourselves in a new language.



As I make this point to my students and try to get them to get on board, I normally try to help them grasp some expressions used to talk about one topic or another. In this lesson, based on a Unit from Innovations Upper Intermediate (by Hugh Dellar and Andrew Walkley), the topic is – Describing People...

Download MP3 or listen to the Audio online here: https://www.podomatic.com/episodes/7542814




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