I’m originally from the Czech Republic. I’ve lived there for about 10 years before my parents decided to move abroad. After some consideration we chose Dubai because of personal + financial reasons as well as to give me and my sister an advantage because we get to learn new languages from young age and help our futures.
I started grade 5 in a private American school and didn’t know any English apart from what I learned in my old school’s foreign language class I attended twice a week. The class was taught by a teacher who barely spoke Better English than her students. As you can imagine I couldn’t understand anything in my new school and I only communicated with my friends with body language, smiling and occasionally throwing in some “yes” or “no”
As I grew older and progressed in school, my English improved with it. The problem began when even after learning enough English to have a proper conversation I was always a bit socially awkward and didn’t talk to anyone if It wasn’t absolutely necessary. This slowed down my learning process and my accent stayed practically.
By the time I was in 8th grade I became a more comfortable in my school and started making some friends and going out more. That’s when I realized I have an accent and my friends kept on making fun of me when I couldn’t say certain words properly.
Czech is a slavic language and we don’t have the ‘th’ sound and our Rs are formed by flapping the tip of your tongue against the behind of your upper teeth. I was so used to and I never stopped doing it in English It took me a while to realize that’s not the way it’s supposed to be pronounced.
2 years ago I moved to a very competitive British school - still in Dubai, because I wanted to do the IB programme ( a high school course you take in your senior and junior year ) and because I hoped it would help me academically.
It’s been 6 years since I moved here and people still say “where are you from, you have an accent” just two minutes into a conversation. I started thinking about colleges and I really want to study in the US or UK but I feel like I would be known as “the weird russian sounding kid” because of the way I speak. I tried the American accent, the English accent, hell, even a combination of the two but nothing worked. I talk to myself when I’m alone or think out loud in hopes of improving my accent but it seems like nothing is changing.
I’m not sure what it is but I began to think I’ll never speak English properly and fit in. I’ve known other kids who came to Dubai not knowing any English and they are now as good as any native speaker. I always feel like an exception.
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via Learn Online English Speaking
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