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[Like a Rolling Stone]

When I firts strated teaching I was telling my students that I went to see a castle and none of them understood what I meant. Their previous teacher was American and they didn't know the English way to pronounce "castle". When i repeated my story with American pronounciation of castle then they said "oh, castle". There have been many instances like this where my accent was difficult to understand.

Do you think we should make our students more aware of differences in accents?

I think students who hear more different typoes of accents are more likely to improve quicker and it is good to make them aware of accents.

What do you think?

By the way, there is some software about this that someone put on the general thread.

[Like a Rolling Stone]

Here is a link to that software

http://classweb.gmu.edu/accent/

[kdynamic]

I made sure to teach all my students basic California English so they could understand my strange speaking style. Now they are all, like, totally all "what's up dude!" and stuff. It's hella sick.

I have noticed, however, that people who come here with strong accents (off the top of my head I am thinking of a guy from Liverpool and another from the Austalian outback), often end up speaking easier to understand English after a while. I guess you could call it more "internationalized" English. I think all English's are equal in an objective sense, but whether you're talking to Japanese students or other people (native or non-native English speaking foriegners) in Japan, there are ways to make yourself more easily understood and people adapt.

[Like a Rolling Stone]

[Deicide]

[NorthofAmerica]

There have definitely been instances where certain accents are much harder for students to understand. I find it helps to talk about your own accent and differences in English with higher level students but not lower level students. Most lower level students can barely tell the difference between accents it seems. Unless you have a very strong accent or rare accent it shouldn't make a big difference.

I use "eh" constantly and occasionally a student will throw it on at the end of a sentence thinking it is part of the last word or some important modifier. I think it's funny but it can be very confusing to them when I correct it.

LARS: How does an Englishman say "castle"?

[Like a Rolling Stone]

[callmesim]

I think a lot of it has to do with exposure. I've had Americans have difficulty with my accent and despite being Australia, my accent is somewhere between Australian and British. I don't know how it happened, I've never been there. Too much BBC for my own good, I guess.

I've seen American TV shows where native English speaks are subtitled. What's the deal with that?! I guess it all comes back to exposure.

There are times when, sadly, I too have to speak in an American accent for students to understand words. "Eight" and "Day" are just two that come to mind.

Some schools even shy away from employing English (as in country) teachers because of this. Cause yeah, the best way to tackle this problem is to ignore it completely.

[Eva Pilot]

I only had that come up once so far.

Tomato/Tomayto.

Rest assured I broke the students of their bad habit of saying Tomayto.

The Australian way is the ONLY way!

[Glenski]

[Like a Rolling Stone]

[kinshachi]

Certainly, exposure to a range of accents will improve a student's listening skill, not just for recognising accents, but also coping with the natural variability within particular accents, which is why it is standard (at least in Australia - I can't speak for elsewhere) to use a wide range of different voices types and accents in listening materials. It does often cause problems initially, especially if students' exposure to these differences has been limited, but with sustained exposure, the patterns start to become apparent, and listening skills can improve dramatically. Besides, not all students necessarily want to go to North America, and even if they do, they won't necessarily only meet North Americans.

It does also become an issue for teaching pronunciation. Perhaps not so much with the lower levels, but more advanced students can reach a stage where they may need to fine-tune their pronunciation enough to develop a particular accent, if, for example, they are planning to live or study in a particular English-speaking country. Granted, not a very common situation, but it can happen.

Some more practical examples:

I usually teach the American pronunciation of "can't", since mistakes with the British/Australian pronunciation can so often lead to embarrassment.

It may be useful to be able to distinguish between "Don" and "Dawn", or "cot" and "caught".

Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are different stress patterns (eg. ADvertisement vs. adVERtisement, which leads to different short forms - ads vs. adverts), different spellings, differently applied tenses (present perfect, anyone?), different vocabulary, as well as words with different meanings (eg. "mad", "trainers", the verb "root"), even different gestures (it's only a "peace" sign if you hold it the right way round...). This stuff comes up all the time and it's useful for them to know.

Sorry, didn't mean to write a thesis, but I find this stuff fascinating...

On the flip side, Stone, I know what you mean about students who have only learnt from Japanese speakers. There's a young guy at the local Starbucks who only understands me if I order the items with English names in katakana pronunciation... "haMU to chiiZU sandoICHi..."

[Like a Rolling Stone]

Thanks for the reply. I think you make some good points!

[Dipso]

Am I correct in thinking that a variety of national accents are now used in the listening section of the TOEIC test? In this regard, it is certainly most helpful for students to be exposed to different varieties of English.

I must say though, that I am fed up of three year olds correcting my British English pronunciation of zebra and tomato! I just say them the American way for the most part in kids' classes now. I am in two minds as to whether I should do this, however.

By the way Stone, I say "cas-ul" rather than "cars-ul".

[Like a Rolling Stone]