Job Discussion Forums

[JZer]

My question is whether in your experience young students that have learned English in a non-English speaking country have been able to acquire a native like English accent?

Taiwanese and Koreans want foreigners so their children acquire an American/North American like accent. Does it really happen?

[rusmeister]

[JZer]

I guess part of my question is how much effect does a native teacher really have. The students in the classroom are picking up their pronunciation from the other students as well as the teacher. Even if they attend an all English elementary school.

[Guy Courchesne]

[Madame J]

Obviously I can't vouch for everyone, but I remember a teacher friend in Thailand being rather disconcerted by the fact a few of her students had begun to adopt a laid back Brighton accent...

[JZer]

[JZer]

If you read Nature versus Nurture by Judith Harris you can see how children learn their accent from other children and not necessarily their parents or teacher. Immigrants usually do not copy their parents accent.

[naturegirl321]

I've seen it happen. People who start learning young and then have strong accents, British ones , when they're older.

[JZer]

[wildchild]

[JZer]

[yaramaz]

In Istanbul I knew a kurdish guy who had learned English in high school to about a pre-int level with a mixed bunch of Turkish and native speaker teachers. A few years later, after university and no English practice, he was sent to Liverpool for an IT job for just a few months. He came back with a flawless Liverpudlian accent.

[Kushluk]

Yes; I tutored a brother and sister in Taipei. One, who was older, spoke well but had a Chinese accent, the sister, however had a flawless midwest American accent - as bland as it gets but very impressive for a girl who had never even been to America!

[arioch36]

here in CHina it is a face-saving phrase, and also a way to demean the true foreign teacher and to justify paying the FT less.

The truth is many CHinese teachers of English do not teach well, and spend most of their time using CHinese to teach English (Yes, I do know that there are CHinese teachers who are very good, even better then some FTs, just like I know there are some Fts who don't have a diploma, and are still very good teachers (never yet met one though ) and yes I know there are nonnative speakers who have better english then some native speakers.)

The excuse "oh, have a FT so the student can acquire or become accustomed to a native accent" is a whitewash. What the school often really means is
1) they can not get teachers good enough to teach the students
2) The locl parents know the joke of learning english they went through, and want FTs
3) The school wants to pay you less then they should, so they don't focus on the FT's actual teaching ability, which would imply training, skill, and committment; raher they focus on they just need anyone with a "good" accent", ie, you are replaceable by any other native speaker, regardless of teaching ability
ironically, it is this type of school that finds it neccessary to hire more non-native speakers

The worst accents come in countries where english is a quasi official language, but not the true native language. In China, there is no such english, usually poor, floating around. So the accent of my CHinese students is usually excellent. The students like to worry about the accent issue, because they have been taught to worry about it. But accent and pronunciation is not their problem, rather vocabulary and listening fluency

[william wallace]

Time, saturation and exposure as well the the L2's preference for a specific accent.