Repeat After Me, Melting Pot

If you’re trying to become a better speaker in another language, and wonder why your accent is so bad and inconsistent, keep reading.

When you study a new language, you learn three main skills: listening, speaking, and reading.

These three ways of embracing that language complement each other.

However, they all have their own variations and specifics from a person to another.

For instance, if you’re watching a conference, the speaker may have an accent that you’ve never heard before. And that will play for making your understanding a bit harder.

The same goes for reading. There are writing styles you’re familiar with, and others that you find extremely difficult to read through.

So why is it so difficult to have a consistent native accent in a new language?

That’s because you’ve learnt that language from different teachers, media, videos, books, and articles.

For this reason, you neither have your own accent nor your own style. You have a received accent for each word and for each sentence.

And what you do is, you mix everything. For instance, you might stress certain syllables the Boston way, and other syllables the New York way.

All in all, you mix different accents you’ve learnt without noticing.

And that’s the reason why your own accent is inconsistent.

What’s the solution? you’d ask.

Hang out with a few natives, and spend your time studying how they form sounds, end their sentences, stress syllables, and everything else that shapes their vocal personality.