Language tips: Accents
As an international student you will be speaking English in class constantly, but there is a major difference between the English you study as a foreign language in your own country, and the way you will use English when you are studying abroad.
The first thing that you will notice as an international student is the variety of accents, idioms, and so on. Your classmates and many of your lecturers are likely to not be native speakers, whose English is not as understandable as a native speaker, especially since many of you will have only had conversations with native speakers as language teachers.
Unless you are studying for a language qualification, your lecturers will not be trained to make themselves understandable to second language speakers; in other words, they will speak very fast, and use a lot of technical and academic terms which it is highly unlikely that you will be familiar with. At first this can seem very daunting, even for native speakers understanding academic lectures can be challenging.
No matter how confident you are with your language skills, I would say that it is essential to record your lectures with your mobile phone/mp3 player etc. to listen back to later. As well as giving you a record of anything you may have missed in the lecture, this will help you to familiarize yourself with your lecturer’s accents, especially pronunciation of academic terms, which is constantly reported as one of the main reasons for failure cited by international students.
Accents can also be a problem for communication between students, remember that you have an accent, and students coming from other countries will have their own accents also, which will probably be totally different from your pronunciation, intonation, and so on.
One of the main benefits of international study is to communicate and share ideas with people from very different cultures and backgrounds to your own; it goes without saying that to do this it is essential to understand what others are saying, and to be understood.
Always remember to speak slowly and clearly, and don’t be afraid to ask other to speak more clearly. Remember, we are all in it together!
