Luke Thompson

But yes, certainly for people at an elementary level, pre-intermediate level, then obviously you've got to make sure that you're not making any mistakes.

You're not saying things radically wrong.

You know, you're getting the basic, most common words and pronouncing them with the right vowel sounds and the right stresses, you know, things like that.

So the absolute basics are important.

But yeah, it's not like perfecting your accent isn't the most important thing at the beginning.

Instead, just...

pinning down the basics of grammar, getting the most frequently used words and understanding them and being able to use them fluently and being able to do most acts of communication successfully.

Those are the most important things.

And then as you develop and get to higher levels, that's where you start to refine things and become more sophisticated.

And that can involve just moving towards

moving ever further towards clarity and, um, also, uh, trying to get rid of the influence of your first language on English.

Uh, so, you know, for example, just trying to get the word stress of multi-syllable words, uh, the same as most English speakers pronounce them and things like that.

Right.

Um,

So, yeah, it's not the most important thing at the beginning, but certainly an important thing to develop as you progress and refine your English.

Yeah, yeah.

Another point I wanted to make, which is on the subject of the variety of different accents in English.

So from the point of view of a learner of English, I think that can sometimes seem like a problem that you think, well, I'm trying to learn this language, but there's just so many different accents.

It's impossible.

I totally understand that.