Language and the Capital

Language and the Capital: A Case Study of English ‘Language Shock’ among Chinese Students in London by Tim Marr (2005)

New Words
-RP is the abbreviation for ‘received pronunciation’, which is the standard form of British pronunciation, based on educated speech in southern England.
-EAP stands for English for Academic Purposes.
-London Eye is a major lure for visitors to London.
-Most religious posit the existence of life after death.
-His memory is hazy about the details of the accident.
-Her tears elicited great sympathy from her audience.
-Anglophile is a person who is not British but who likes Britain or British thing very much.
-The report states explicitly that the plan was to blame.
-She is strikingly beautiful.
-Putonghua is the standard spoken form of modern Chinese, based on the form spoken in Beijin.
-The puddles had coalesced into a small stream.
-It must be conceded that different judges have different approaches to these cases.
-He was interrogated by the police for over 12 hours.
-We have extrapolated these results from research done other countries.
-I paid scant attention to what she was saying.
-The job entails a lot of hard work.
-Europe’s foreign policy is inextricably linked with that of the US.
-Let me just recap on what we’ve decided so far.
-They had to overcome formidable obstacles.
-The layperson cannot really understand mental illness.
-She averred that she had never seen the man before.
-It’s a great paradox that even in a rich country there is so much poverty.
-Diglossia is a situation in which two languages or two forms of a language are used under different conditions in a community.
-She traced the contours of his face with her finger.
-He reached an erroneous conclusion.
-Children are sociable from birth onwards.
-The company has announced that it will undertake a full investigation into the accident.
-Confucianism reached Japan in the early sixth century and had an influence on Japanese morals and the Japanese view of life.
-This is a documentary with some sobering observations about the cruelty of war.
-Anonymity is guaranteed when you go for an HIV test at a free clinic in Japan.

My Idea
I was also surprised at different kinds of pronunciation in London. I didn’t understand at a local post office and supermarket. They spoke English fluently, but their pronunciation was different from what I expected. Now I know there are a great number of people from various countries and they speak in their own accent. I am one of them. I think pronunciation is less important than fluency when I speak English. I need more practice and effort to speak English fluently.