Introduction? Podcast survey

Please listen to the podcast Introduction? with Ulrike Bavendiek and Wil Hardman and choose which statements under 1-4 are true, according to the podcast.

Please note that the terms ‘native’ and ‘foreign’ are ill-defined and can be problematic. We therefore use the terms ‘first language’ for all the language/s acquired early in childhood and ‘second language’ for all language/s acquired or learned later in life.

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* 1. The standard British English accent (received pronunciation) is

the correct way to pronounce the language.

the neutral way to pronounce the language.

a particularly prestigious accent.

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* 2. Children

learn to produce and perceive all the sounds that are possible in all human languages early on in their lives.

acquire only the sound system/s, i.e. which sounds are relevant or not relevant in the language/s around them, early on in their lives and can find it hard to produce or even perceive other sounds later in life.

generally show no interest in learning a language, unless their parents meticulously teach them.

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* 3. People have second language speaker accents

because they are still learning the language.

because they learned the language later in life and cannot fully adjust to the different sound system of the second language.

because how people pronounce language is genetically determined.

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* 4. An accent is

a good indication of how well someone has mastered, or not mastered a language.

a good indication of the quality of someone’s language classes.

no indication of their mastery of the language or quality of the teaching someone received.