Brief dissertations 3: the language impact

Recommendations to avoid LI

For teachers:

Do not speak slow and with pauses between words. Speak as you always do.

If English is not your native language:

Be fluent (it is not necesary to speak as a native speaker -remember the wide variety of immigrants there are in USA, Canada, Australia or England, they are fluent but their pronunciation keeps a lot from their native tongues). Don’t be afraid of speaking like Speedy Gonzalez, just remember he was a very fluent mouse.

There is not correct or better English. There is formal and informal. Of course, there is what is called Standard English (a selection made out of the English varieties taught at schools, used by T.V. anchors, and news broadcasters, for instance). Real life shows that Standard English exists only in classroom environments where English is taught and in very limited real life situations (like those mentioned above).

Provide your students with actual interviews from TV or radio programs.

Include movies in class with a detailed viewing-listening program (make clear you’ll have to stop the movie in specific moments to review listening). In movies they represent different kind of people with different backgrounds. That's very useful. And even though they are just movies, most of the characters nowadays are very realistic.

For students:

If your teachers speak like What...is...your...name? (dots meaning pause) get rid of them.

Watch American an British TV programs, not only news. Watch videos at Youtube (a famous cheff cooking, for example to learn kitchen and cooking vocabulary).

Watch films at home with captions in English or without them (never in Spanish)

Listen to radio programs in English (you can enter BBC radio on internet, or other radio stations). This is very important since radio means you are not watching people speak. One of the things students tend to do when speaking to a native speaker is watch lips movements, something like lip reading. When surrounded by two or three native speaker the student has no time to read everybody’s lips and then comes the failure.

Watch videos from The New York Times or other american or british newspapers (on internet again). In this videos you can see interviews with common people: homeless, sportsmen, police officers, car dealers, etc.

And of course, save money to travel to an English-speaking country as soon as possible to practice what you have learned.

The idea is to provide –both, students and teachers- an atmosphere of authentic English, as students will find when they travel to an English speaking country, taking into account that English teaching has to be oriented towards competitive and useful communicative skills.

Probably there are more recommendations and features regarding Language Impact. I am quite sure that those who have suffered LI could feed this dissertation with more personal experiences.
If so, you are very welcome.