Synopsis "Accents, Personal Stories"
Based on the Speech Plasma method the book is designed to teach the students to speak English in a natural conversational manner. This book includes personal stories narrated by seventeen people from different parts of the United Kingdom, the USA, Ireland, Canada and Australia. The volume is supplied with audio files. Our intention in recording this range of voices was neither to collect as many accents as possible, nor to find the most typical or strongest accents. Rather, our aim was to illustrate a range of regional pronunciation in English. By listening to the tapes the reader will hear the differences in the way native speakers communicate in English, and get an idea of how the language is spoken in such diverse places as London, New York, Manchester and many other parts of the English speaking world. Accents, Personal Stories is part of the Fluency Practice series designed to expose students to English as spoken by native speakers in a range of situations. This book, however, differs from the others in the series, in that while the stories the speakers tell were also recorded and transcribed, they were not edited in order to rid them of unnecessary repetition or other grammatical errors. This gives the stories the authentic flavour of English as it is spoken. The book's aim is to expose the student to an actual informal, conversational style. Educationalists are currently debating the factors which influence the way in which English is spoken, such as the speaker's thought processes as they mingle with the demands of grammar and syntax, and sometimes it is unclear which usage of the language is "correct" or not. What is evident, however, about conversational style is that in the process of speaking, while expressing thoughts and ideas, it is impossible to avoid afterthoughts, interrupted thoughts, repetition and retracing of ideas. So the way we have commented on the text is by detecting grammatical mistakes in the words and sentences that did not occur under the influence of these extra-linguistic factors. Mistakes of the type belong to non-standard English (NSE). The other uses of technically "incorrect" English should be considered as current conversational style (CS). Accents, Personal Stories can be used for listening and reading practice, for identifying regional accents and analysing various informal types of speech. The book can also be used for teaching and learning how to present a personal story in a concise and interesting form.
