Accents

Listening to a recording of Virginia Woolf and her RP accent made me think about the debate all around accents when teaching and learning English.

Here is the recording: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/04/29/craftsmanship-virginia-woolf-speaks-1937/

I love what she is saying but listening to her pronunciation.....

Was that what a learner would aspire to?  Hilarious now or is it?

We all have different accents where I work, most of us are native speaking teachers with British, New Zealand, American, Canadian, Irish, American accents. Do our students learning English in New Zealand notice our accents? Do they care about the accent of their teacher? Do we?

By the way...what is a British accent?

I really like this post from Chia Suan Chong:

Whose accent is better?

I often try to reinforce the idea especially in Business English that most of the time colleagues working internationally will be communicating in English but English won't be their mother tongues so don't get stressed about accent, it's communication that counts!

However, a New Zealand colleague told me that when she went to teach in Korea she was told to teach with an American accent and change her name as there was another teacher with the same name which would be too confusing for the students. So, she became Alice with an American accent!

Identity

I have a two children (3 and 7) in New Zealand and both my partner and I are British. This has been interesting because we often notice the NZ pronunciation and vocabulary which naturally they have acquired living here...do we care about it? No...but interestingly my parents on holiday from the UK used to comment or maybe correct them, they no longer do this but as accent is bound up in identity this is becoming a more complex issue as they grow older and question it themselves.

I took my son to an event where there was a rugby game, my son who has lived in New Zealand since he was 1 was told "with that accent he should be holding a different shaped ball "referring to a round soccer ball which of course signifies the main competitive sport in England. At first I couldn't understand the joke but then once it clicked I felt a mixture of emotions. I don't want my son to be picked out for sounding different, he doesn't like soccer, he is more of a Kiwi than a Brit culturally living here, isn't he?

I know the man was having a joke but the fact that he had picked out my son's accent as different was a shock to me.

In the UK, regional differences in our accents are commonplace and tied up with historical and class systems. Here are some great examples of regional differences in the UK:

A Tour of the British Isles



Coming back to the question, do our students care about their teacher's accent? I sent out a poll to my students through our class Facebook page and here were the results, only 4 students answered but...


https://www.polleverywhere.com/multiple_choice_polls/WmHBpwIQy9YyGQi

Why?

I celebrate accents....they make English sound richer and more colourful. I love listening to the different accents my students have in English and I miss the regional differences travelling 20 miles from one town to another town in the UK. How boring life would be if we sounded the same...