Minimizing Mother Tongue Influence In English Speaking

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• Minimizing Mother Tongue Influence in English
  Speaking

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• Mother tongue influence or MTI means the impact
  of the way your first language is spoken on the
  second language you are trying to learn. For us,
  it means effect of our mother tongue on the way
  we speak English. So, when you see someone
  speaking English with a heavy Bengali or Punjabi
  or Telugu accent, you know the person has an MTI
  problem.

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Why does MTI Happen?

• If till an advanced age, the only language we
  speak is our mother tongue, a lot of the speech
  patterns get set really hard in our brain. Every
  language as its own specific way words are
  pronounced. Each language has peculiar sounds
  specific to it. If we start speaking more than
  one language from early childhood, we easily
  retain the flexibility of uttering sounds from
  different language systems. Our brain can be
  easily trained for different sounds from
  different languages. But if we do not receive
  that training in our childhood, our brains get
  accustomed to the sounds on only one language and
  at a later stage it becomes pretty difficult to
  train the brain for a totally different sound
  system needed for the second language.

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• Essentially, bilingual kids do not face the MTI
  problem in general because their brains have been
  trained in the flexibility of two or more
  language systems and they are able to easily
  speak two languages without errors.
• It is believed that MTI is a training problem. A
  student's brain and vocal system have been
  trained in a certain way that makes it difficult
  for him to suddenly open himself to a totally
  different set of sounds and words. The habits and
  speech patterns are rooted strongly in the
  learners mind and it takes sustained effort to
  remove the MTI problem.

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• The students are required to practice speaking
  the new sounds that first makes them comfortable
  with the new sounds and then habituates them.
  Continuous repeated practice breaks old set
  patterns and builds new sound and speech patterns
  plus trains the brain in the flexibility required
  to handle two parallel sound and speech systems.

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Can I Solve MTI on my Own?

• Theoretically yes but the probabilities will be
  very low. The habit and speech patterns are so
  intrinsic and natural to you that most of the
  times you would not realize some crumbs of the
  MTI problem in your English speaking. You need
  someone to point out whenever you are slipping
  down that road. Changing something as ingrained
  as native language speech patterns is an
  extremely difficult task simply because it is a
  very old habit strongly solidified. You are
  inclined to fall back on to your default speech
  patterns again and again. You need someone to
  point it out every time and force you to not slip
  back to your original speech patterns.

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Can MTI ever be solved?

• MTI is solvable but an extremely complex problem.
  It needs strong commitment and intense effort for
  4-6 weeks. Once you carry the new speech patterns
  and get used to them, slowly, those sounds will
  become a part of your system. Once the new habit
  starts taking root, the amount of effort required
  will reduce and once it is solidified enough, the
  effort required is very minimal...

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Thank You

• Voice Training and Research Institute
• No.135, First Main Road, K.K Nagar, Madurai-
  625020.
• E-mail support_at_voiceskills.org
• Ph no 91- 95970 82692 / 95970 84540Web
  https//voiceskills.org