Let your children say “No” to Mother Tongue Influence

Globalized world is now a ground reality and English–unanimously approved and unofficially accepted–is the global language. Under the circumstances, a person’s professional success very much depends on his/her communication skills (more specifically, how well he can speak and write English). So, for your kids’ bright future, you must pay heed to developing their language prowess.

Mother tongue influence (MTI) is a major challenge to those learning English as a second language. MTI is mainly noticed in a person’s accent when he/she speaks English. It is due to the influence of his/her mother’s tongue on the accent.

Some common features of MTI are as follows:

• Wrong articulation with regard to the sound of vowels and consonants.
• Incorrect pronunciation, which involves unnecessary stressing on the syllable.
• Faulty enunciation, which denotes incorrect stress, and problem in pitch and tone.

People having MTI face great difficulty communicating with native English speakers. Most of the time, their messages are either misinterpreted or incomprehensible. However, it is possible to rid a person’s English of MTI.

Use the following tips to help your children overcome MTI.

• Ask your kids to examine mouth movements of native English speakers. You can sit with them and watch some good international news/knowledge channels, such as BBC, CNN, and National Geography. Also, encourage your children to emulate the intonation and speech of these speakers and repeat it again and again. It will be easier for your children to escape from MTI when they know the correct pronunciations of words as well as voice modulation.
• Let your children listen to good English music. Make sure that they are listening to a native English singer. You may not know how potent English music is in solving MTI-related problems.
• Recommend your children to follow a good online dictionary. Apart from providing the meaning (s) of a word, online dictionaries also give its right pronunciation. It will be quite helpful in eliminating MTI.
• Another good way to improve English pronunciation is reading newspapers aloud every day at least for 15-20 minutes. You can also record your kid’s voice while he/she reads newspapers aloud and later, play the recording. Your kid can easily find out pronunciation-related errors while listening to his/her own voice.

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