Hello Everyone,
I'm 25 years old, and I've been living in Canada for over 10 years. My accent has been the single biggest obstacle in my entire life because I've always wanted to become more culturally integrated, but when you speak with an accent, people always see you as representing "your country" rather than speaking on your own behalf.
I've been able to correct a lot of mistakes on my own, but it's a very slow process... Usually, the hardest part is to figure out where the problems are, but when I know what to fix, I can change it in a matter of weeks if not days... It would be a lot easier if I could get some feedback from a professional... but the problem is, even those who specialize in "accent reduction" are staunch defenders of the Chomskyan doctrine in its strongest form... stating that nothing can be done about a foreign accent. Their only criterion is intelligibility. Once you can be understood, no further improvement is necessary, desirable or even possible.
As far as I know, real-world research on critical periods has produced mixed evidence with about 5% of the people surveyed slipping through the cracks... But even if it's true that a perfect native-like accent cannot be achieved, why should there be an arbitrary cut-off after which you have to stop trying to improve? Typically, the supposed plateau magically coincides with the level you're at.
Here's the deal. I took an assessment (the Compton P-ESL), and it appears that about 2% of the sounds are incorrectly pronounced, and I have intonation problems on top of that. I've been able to fix many sounds before, long after all "critical periods" had expired. However, the person who did the assessment was firmly convinced that those 2% are here to stay... (in her words, "it's untreatable"). She even had to come up with some revisionist history to support her claim. She gave me a mini-lecture, saying that spies are always trained from early childhood, and that "accent elimination" never happens after the age of 5.
However, I never asked for a guarantee of elimination; all I wanted was an incremental improvement. Had I believed the manstream view from the start, that number would have been something like 50%. They always told me the status quo was all I could hope for based on scientific research and their observations about other "foreigners".
Has anyone here had any experience with professionals? Do I have any hope of finding one who can relax the rules a little bit and call the strikes and balls *regardless* of whether they result from English not being my first language?
I'm 25 years old, and I've been living in Canada for over 10 years. My accent has been the single biggest obstacle in my entire life because I've always wanted to become more culturally integrated, but when you speak with an accent, people always see you as representing "your country" rather than speaking on your own behalf.
I've been able to correct a lot of mistakes on my own, but it's a very slow process... Usually, the hardest part is to figure out where the problems are, but when I know what to fix, I can change it in a matter of weeks if not days... It would be a lot easier if I could get some feedback from a professional... but the problem is, even those who specialize in "accent reduction" are staunch defenders of the Chomskyan doctrine in its strongest form... stating that nothing can be done about a foreign accent. Their only criterion is intelligibility. Once you can be understood, no further improvement is necessary, desirable or even possible.
As far as I know, real-world research on critical periods has produced mixed evidence with about 5% of the people surveyed slipping through the cracks... But even if it's true that a perfect native-like accent cannot be achieved, why should there be an arbitrary cut-off after which you have to stop trying to improve? Typically, the supposed plateau magically coincides with the level you're at.
Here's the deal. I took an assessment (the Compton P-ESL), and it appears that about 2% of the sounds are incorrectly pronounced, and I have intonation problems on top of that. I've been able to fix many sounds before, long after all "critical periods" had expired. However, the person who did the assessment was firmly convinced that those 2% are here to stay... (in her words, "it's untreatable"). She even had to come up with some revisionist history to support her claim. She gave me a mini-lecture, saying that spies are always trained from early childhood, and that "accent elimination" never happens after the age of 5.
However, I never asked for a guarantee of elimination; all I wanted was an incremental improvement. Had I believed the manstream view from the start, that number would have been something like 50%. They always told me the status quo was all I could hope for based on scientific research and their observations about other "foreigners".
Has anyone here had any experience with professionals? Do I have any hope of finding one who can relax the rules a little bit and call the strikes and balls *regardless* of whether they result from English not being my first language?