Looking for advice from vocal coaches, actors or singers!

[~Leah~]

Posted: 4/9/05 at 3:27pm

Hello!

I'm new at the board but I thought I just take the chance and ask a question. I'm having a problem and hope that maybe someone here has a tip for me!

Right now I'm working part-time for a German Import/Export company. My task is to advise the interns of the company who came from China about a month ago. We have English lessons together. I try to help them to get a good start here in Germany and we work together on their English conversation skills. (English is the only language that makes us able to communicate because they don't speak German and I don't speak Chinese.) Their English is quite good but the main problem is their pronunciation. Most of the time one can hardly understand what they are saying. We are working on that but I'm teaching a language for the first time so I'm trying different things to help them. I really need some tips and tricks that will help to get over this pronunciation issue. I'm looking for exercises and tasks that "my" Chinese ladies could do to improve so that they will be able to have a proper conversation at the company. (It would make working with them waaay easier for their colleagues!) No one is really able to give me a tip here to deal with people whose mother language is so different from the English and German language.

I have heard of professional actors who have worked with vocal coaches early in their careers in order to first lose their Southern (or other) accents and then learn to properly pronounce their words without an accent. I thought that perhaps a vocal coach/actor/singer may know of some tasks or exercises that these professionals were using during their training or while teaching and maybe they'd be willing to share some tidbits with me. That's why I got the idea of posting this problem to this board. I thought (and hoped) that with all the professionals here, someone might be able to give me some advice.

Thank you so much!

[oxdreaminxo]

Posted: 4/9/05 at 9:10pm

Hi, and welcome to BWW! Anyway, this'll sound kind of silly, but the first thought that popped into my head after reading this was the scene from "My Fair Lady" when her vocal/speech teacher made her speak the vowls and "The rain in spain falls mainly on the plain". Just little rhymes and tounge twisters might help them. Good luck!

[~Leah~]

Posted: 4/10/05 at 3:49pm

Thanks for welcoming me and your thoughts on my problem!

Funny that you are mentioning "My Fair Lady"! This was exactly the same what came to my mind when I realized what the big challenge of this job is! I investigated a little bit and found out that "Pygmalion" is shown here and they even have a staging in English! That's unusual. I'm excited about it but it would be too difficult for my pupil, I fear. Nevertheless *I* plan to see it anyway! :)

Cool about the tongue twisters. Actually I was using tongue twisters in a lesson two weeks ago! It was fun! And I thought it made the gals aware of some sounds of the English language. It's funny to see what is sticking in the mind of the pupil when they are learning. Some tongue twisters really grew on them! :) So your thought isn't silly at all! We also did listen to a sound clip, did work with syllables and so on...

So I'm looking for more tasks where people would get an "awareness" and a feeling for the English language; especially for sounds and pronounce. I hoped that maybe someone here would have experiences with teaching or learning to speak properly. I got the impression that this is maybe part of the actors/singer training. (Isn't it?) I'd be happy to hear about it!