The importance of a near-native accent. This talk will discuss whether or not it is important for EFL-teachers to try and achieve a near-native generally accepted accent for their students. The focus will be on the credibility of non-native speakers of English while speaking English in a globalising world, with a heavy or mild foreign accent. These days and in the future more and more non-native speakers of English will communicate with each other in English. For a native speaker it is not that difficult to understand a non-native speaker speaking English with a lot of local or regional phonological interferences. For two non-native speakers of different origin, both speaking English with a mild or heavy accent, it might be more likely that confusion about what is being said occurs because of the foreign accent. Research (Shiri Lev-Ari &, Boaz Keysar, Why don't we believe non-native speakers? The influence of accent on credibility, 2010) proves that a near-native accent adds to the credibility of the speaker. In the Netherland most EFL-teachers were trained to speak English with an RP or GA accent. As soon as they start teaching students in secondary education they accept “World English” and most teachers do not pay a lot of attention to pronunciation mistakes made by their students, as long as they can get the message across. During the talk the audience will be asked how important they consider a near-native accent is, what mistakes they accept and don’t accept and in which way teaching pronunciation is an issue in their lessons. Some sound samples with typical mistakes the Dutch make while speaking English will be presented and discussed to see if the audience consider them to be confusing or not. Then a strategy, using phonetics as a tool, will be presented to help correcting a few typical mistakes. session type : talk (30 minutes) Audience; EFL teachers & teacher trainers
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Introduction The Integrated Recovery Scales (IRS) was developed by the Dutch National Expertise board for routine outcome monitoring with severe mental illnesses. This board aimed to develop a multidimensional recovery measure directed at 1. clinical recovery, 2. physical health, 3. social recovery (work, social contacts, independent living) and 4. existential, personal recovery. The measure had to be short, suited for routine outcome monitoring and present the perspective of both mental health professionals and service users with severe mental illnesses. All aspects are assessed over a period of the pas 6 months. Objectives The objective of this research is validation of the Integral Recovery Scales and to test the revelance for clinical practice and police evaluation. Methods The instrument was tested with 500 individuals with severe mental illnesses (80% individuals with a psychotic disorder), of whom 200 were followed up for 1 year. For the questions concerning clinical recovery, physical health and social recovery mental health care workers conducted semi structured interviews with people living with serious illnesses. The questions concerning personal health were self-rated. We analyzed interrater reliability, convergent and divergent validity and sensitivity to change. Results The instrument has a good validity and is easy to complete for service users and mental health care workers and appropriate for clinical and policy evaluation goals. Conclusions The Integrated Recovery Scales can be a useful instrument for a simple and meaningful routine outcome monitoring. Page: 121
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