Reading response #7-15 - Essay Example

The paper "Pronunciation Experienced by Native and Non-Native" is an outstanding example of a humanitarian essay. Reading through this topic of phonology, I found it both interesting and challenging. I never imagined that the issue of pronunciation experienced by native and non-native will one day be a topic of controversy. Also, it was good to learn terms like (BES) & (MSE) in this ways Jenkins has answered to my question, which was about the native speaker in the week, 6 (regarding my daughter).

There is an interesting point I want to mention it on page 7 Smithy stated that ‘English belong to the whole world no matter who you are’ (Smithy, 1976; pg. 7). In referring to this statement, I disagree with what Smithy stated because I think it is not right to conclude that English is being distorted by allowing non-native accent of different dialects and orthography to influence English! Consequently, the public school in my country taught English 7th grade. As a result, most parents at that time sent their children to private schools from first grade in order to help them to speak English as natives and most parents insist that they want their children to be taught by native speakers or people who have an accurate English pronunciation.

However, currently the system in public schools has been changed and English starts being taught at the 3rd grade. Therefore, apart from the aforementioned solution that seems ineffectual, what are some of the strategies that can effectively address this problem better and from divergent dimensions? In addition, Kramsch (1993, p.13) argue that L2 can acquire what he refers as ‘intercultural competency’ and this enables them to accommodate other ‘cultural baggage’ and mutually integrate with theirs.

For example, in my country, we have a lot of non- native speakers coming to form Pakistan, India, Philippine, Jakarta, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia. However, they mispronounce words, but it is not difficult for us as native Arabic speakers to understand what the non-natives wanted to put across. Interestingly, in order to communicate with them, we have been forced to omit some Arabic consonants and vowels sound in order to communicate with them. Otherwise, they will not understand us and this will defeat the purpose of language which is to communicate.