Repost of a comment I made on this site:
http://www.lingholic.com/how-to-get-speaking-practice-in-a-foreign-language/
I struggled with the Power Struggle in Germany. I was an exchange student sent there for a year with very little German. When I first got to Gymnasium a lot of the Germans would want to practice their English with me and I simply answered back, "Ach man o man eh, ich bin hier doch Deutsch zu lernen, ich kann schon English." Dude, I'm here to learn German, I already speak English. And so it began. What ended up happening was that it would encourage me to learn German that much more. The speaking with two other natives is a great idea! The only downside is sometimes the two natives want to prove how great they are with their foreign language skills to each other and it gets ugly, "So Markus waat dyu you sink about zat, zat we go to dah uhhhh down da stayahs to enjoy lunch wiz Edam."Anyway, one thing I noticed to stop this from happening earlier on was work on your accent. If you have a solid German (or whatever language) accent they will think you speak better than you do. I met a couple Germans with really, really good accents whose English was bad. After I was fluent I told them in German to try out their English with me for fun. They'd be embarrassed, but some just had a really good ear and their British or American accent was clean. After a awhile towards the end of my year in Germany my goal was to receive the following: The best was to speak in a noisy bar and have a German I just met believe that I was German but from another area of Germany (I spoke southern German). That was the ultimate compliment. But anything more than 5 minutes talking and I'd be bound to make a grammar mistake somewhere. Second was for them to believe that I was German but maybe slightly, uh... mentally handicapped or "slow." That was fine with me too. And third was they knew I was a foreigner but they didn't know from where. That was a compliment too. The ultimate insult was if they said I must be American and started speaking English to me. That rarely, if ever, happened towards the end of my year. Remember: work on your accent!!
http://www.lingholic.com/how-to-get-speaking-practice-in-a-foreign-language/
I struggled with the Power Struggle in Germany. I was an exchange student sent there for a year with very little German. When I first got to Gymnasium a lot of the Germans would want to practice their English with me and I simply answered back, "Ach man o man eh, ich bin hier doch Deutsch zu lernen, ich kann schon English." Dude, I'm here to learn German, I already speak English. And so it began. What ended up happening was that it would encourage me to learn German that much more. The speaking with two other natives is a great idea! The only downside is sometimes the two natives want to prove how great they are with their foreign language skills to each other and it gets ugly, "So Markus waat dyu you sink about zat, zat we go to dah uhhhh down da stayahs to enjoy lunch wiz Edam."Anyway, one thing I noticed to stop this from happening earlier on was work on your accent. If you have a solid German (or whatever language) accent they will think you speak better than you do. I met a couple Germans with really, really good accents whose English was bad. After I was fluent I told them in German to try out their English with me for fun. They'd be embarrassed, but some just had a really good ear and their British or American accent was clean. After a awhile towards the end of my year in Germany my goal was to receive the following: The best was to speak in a noisy bar and have a German I just met believe that I was German but from another area of Germany (I spoke southern German). That was the ultimate compliment. But anything more than 5 minutes talking and I'd be bound to make a grammar mistake somewhere. Second was for them to believe that I was German but maybe slightly, uh... mentally handicapped or "slow." That was fine with me too. And third was they knew I was a foreigner but they didn't know from where. That was a compliment too. The ultimate insult was if they said I must be American and started speaking English to me. That rarely, if ever, happened towards the end of my year. Remember: work on your accent!!
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