A housemate of mine keeps complaining about how he applies for jobs, gets an interview - and then gets turned down. Now he's an immigrant (from Hong Kong), but he's been here for 18 years (since he was like 7 or 8 I guess). By listening to his accent in English though, most would assume he moved here like 5 minutes ago. I think his problem is he hung out with only fobs most of his life here, which seriously hindered his English oral communication skills. In writing though, you can't even tell English isn't his first language.

The jobs he's applying to are a lot of management type things, which is why I think he's getting shot down a lot in favour of people who can speak better.

So I was thinking he should probably take a public speaking class, but I don't know if anything like that is available at McMaster. Does anyone know anything about that?

Also, to anyone who does know about this kind of stuff (linguistics people?), just out of curiosity; do these classes also work on teaching people how to speak with less of an obvious accent?

I'm pretty sure he just needs to change the way he says a few sounds to sound more clear...

Thanks.

Damn that was entertaining to read.. well... you could have him start by getting friends to correct him when he talks. Toastmasters does public speaking but this sounds kind of like ESL? Hmm, sorry I'm not sure how to help.

I'd suggest having him talk to the centre for student development offices. I know they have ESL classes but that probably wont help to much seeing as how it primarily teaches english (or at least that's what I assume), but they could most likely give out good suggestions as to where to go to help with his pronunciation and accent.

I remember seeing a ton of ads in CNH/TSH in the beginning of the year about a workshop which helps students with public speaking and iirc it was free too. I completely forget the contact info though :(

i heard Rosetta Stone is great at reducing accents, basically it forces him to pronounce the right way or else he doesn't pass it

Tell him to be a man.

Old joke is old?

I found Rosetta Stone pretty useless... >_> I pirated their Korean lessons and I've learned nothing...

He could work on being a little more attentive to how people say certain words, phrases.

When I was 5 I had the same problem, and I grew up in Canada as well, but I was pretty reluctant to use English at the time because I felt way more comfortable with Chinese.

The Rosetta Stone stuff works, but I don't know if they have one for English. :S

Including ESL classes in school, I also watched more english TV and listened to the radio (the news stuff). It took a long time but it worked in the end.

There's most likely more to his problem than his speaking abilty. Lack of confidence? Lack of eye contact? Or his resume doesn't knock people's feet off the ground?

It's probably his accent, and he just needs to work on that, not his public speaking ability.
I know a girl at my work who was one of the best workers there, but she had a really bad accent so she never got promoted when she really should have been. It would have required her to deal with customers more often and they didn't want that because it was difficult to understand her. Might be the situation with your friend

Originally Posted by Desda

I found Rosetta Stone pretty useless... >_> I pirated their Korean lessons and I've learned nothing...

It's because you pirated it.

Toastmasters is decent for public speaking,...

or you tell him to go hang with non fob people.

It's funny how everyone here seems to know what the term 'fob' means. lol

You guys DO realize that people can have accents and still be coherent and good speakers, right?

Everyone's associating accents = fob noob speaker.

Is his problem more of his vocabulary is limited and/or he doesn't know how to correctly say a lot of words out loud?

I recommend watching a lot of TV, reading out loud ALL the time if it's English, dictionary.com'ing any and all words he thinks hes mispronouncing (click a button and you can hear how it's pronounced)

Um, idk. I'm trying to think how I lost my accent. A lot of ****ing effort, that's for sure. Took me years to finally be able to say "th" words.

I agree with what Cheri said. Maybe he could try reading novels/magazines out loud...?

Originally Posted by lawleypop

You guys DO realize that people can have accents and still be coherent and good speakers, right?

Everyone's associating accents = fob noob speaker.

Is his problem more of his vocabulary is limited and/or he doesn't know how to correctly say a lot of words out loud?

I recommend watching a lot of TV, reading out loud ALL the time if it's English, dictionary.com'ing any and all words he thinks hes mispronouncing (click a button and you can hear how it's pronounced)

Um, idk. I'm trying to think how I lost my accent. A lot of ****ing effort, that's for sure. Took me years to finally be able to say "th" words.

Well, he's in a pretty unique situation - his vocabulary and grammar are fine, it's just that he has an epic accent. Apparently he has much less of an accent in French though, since he said he lived in Montreal for a few years and didn't have as many fobs to chill with.

Also, I suspect he doesn't show confidence when speaking - which is another reason a public speaking class might help him.