Job Discussion Forums

hlamb · Joined: 09 Dec 2003 Posts: 431 Location: Canada

I find Glasgow accents to be about the most difficult for me. Our students complain when they change teachers, no matter where the original teacher is from or where the new teacher is from, they say they can't understand the new one. After about two weeks, they get used to the accent (usually) and there are no more complaints.

TheLongWayHome · Joined: 07 Jun 2006 Posts: 1016 Location: San Luis Piojosi

Oreen Scott · Joined: 11 Jan 2008 Posts: 179 Location: Oaxaca, Mexico

Everyone has an accent. English is rapidly becoming a global language and there are and will be all kinds of accents.

One of the speech assessment I did last term, and I did about 15 was of a man who worked for a while in Switzerland. He is Portugese.

When in Switzerland he could speak on the telephone to a person in Japan speaking English with an accent and then speak to a person from France who spoke English with a totally different accent. Everyone understood everyone.

He immigrated to Winnipeg and he isn't understood by many of our non-cosmopolitan citizens. His accent is mild and charming.

Half the responsibility to understanding is with the listener, the other half is with the speaker.

chola · Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 1:52 am Post subject: the ratio

Something that made me laugh when I taught in multi-lingual classes was when a student from country X would complain that he/she couldn't understand student from country Y because of his/her "accent".

Guy Courchesne · Joined: 10 Mar 2003 Posts: 9650 Location: Mexico City

The revered Jeremy Harmer had some recent comments along these lines of late, whilst addressing a group of Indian ELTs.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/thscrip/print.pl?file=2008021258110200.htm&date=2008/02/12/&prd=th&