Accents in Learning a Language

Learning and translating between languages can really be a funny thing.  This weekend while visiting with some people who teach English at the university in town and some others that have been here for several years, I have been able to hear some humorous stories.

Today I opened my bank account and had lunch at McDonald's with a fellow Korean co-teacher.  We started talking about how to communicate with a taxi driver and we started going over a few words.

One of the biggest things I'm seeing in learning any language, is not entirely the sounds but it truly boils down to how you annunciate and where you place the accent.  For instance, I told my co-teacher how I said my neighborhood to a taxi driver.  When I said it, I had placed the accent on the second syllable when the correct way to say it is really on the first.  So what I was saying (by placing the accent on the second syllable) is a type of portable toilet.

I was also able to clear up how to say little words when giving directions.  From talking with my foreigner friends, I was told that left is "winjo" and right is "orangjo".  Saying left was correct, but how I said right was a bit off and it should be pronounced "oredjo" - or something rather similar with a "d" sound (I'll have to check on that).  The two super easy ones to say were "straight", which is basically pronounced "cheek-chin" and "stop here" that is "yogio".

Annunciation and accents is a consistent issue that I keep seeing in class.  In order to break kids of this and make them known of the error, I stole a little idea from something I did in HS.  In sophomore year English with Mrs. Skutt, we always used to "pound out" the vocabularly words in order to be more aware of where the accent mark should be placed when we took the vocab quiz.  Before she taught us this in class, I always struggled at this section of the quiz.  After pounding out the words I would easily pick up on the rhythm and then remember where to mark it on the quiz

So I started doing this with my 3rd-5th grade students after we complete a reading or I am reviewing some words with them.  With several of these students since they are at school all day already, their attention spans are fairly short so trying to keep their attention for them to learn something can also be a challenge.  The activity of pounding out words or to "make a song" out of them appears to not only help them annunciate and accent the words correctly, but keep them motivated as well.  So instead of getting the common reaction of "Agh, I have to go over more words.. can't we play a game now?" I get the reaction of "Yay - I get to pound on a desk".