Job Discussion Forums

[Kurochan]

[cj750]

I've met very few Chinese parents who would want a well-educated Indian using proper English grammar to teach their children....

[vikdk]

[tw]

Personally, I do like the idea of students having different FT's every term so they can be exposed to as many types of accents as possible --as long as they are from native speakers. This helps them learn to be flexible with their hearing and not just mindlessly expect 'American' pronunciation in every spoken word. That said, I do have problems with FT's whose pronunciation is so far off from mainstream that students have a difficult understanding them to follow their instructions.

My wife told me that one of the FT's that taught at DLILI was a South African elderly man of Indian heritage. According to my friend in Shenyang who was still teaching there after I'd left, the students didn't really like him mainly because of his 'strange' accent.

[prof]

Qualified "big 3"* teachers still rule and always will.

*US, Canada, Britain.

[viovio]

[prof]

But the rich Chinese want to aquire a North American Accent (US or Canada!)

They want to sound like Jack over Rose.

[viovio]

[no_exit]

No prof, I'm not wrong, the "rich Chinese" who think that accent matters are wrong. I never said the Chinese don't care about accent, did I? I said that their obsessing over the right or wrong accent is ultimately meaningless.

I'll repeat myself. In life, you will encounter all sorts of accents. There is no "right" accent. If you teach your students that it is better to sound like a North American, or a Brit, or an Aussie or whatever, then you're doing them a great disservice. Plus, if you're trying to sell your own accent as the "best" one, you're cheating your students. You know as well as I do that unless someone spends a long time in one country or another, they're still going to sound Chinese. It doesn't matter what country their teacher is from, how "standard" his accent is, they're still going to sound like Chinese English speakers to almost any foreigner they come across.

How about rather than playing into their silly ideas, you simply educate them about the reality of the English speaking world. English isn't "standard," there's no putonghua of English. If your students can approximate ANY accent, then they're already doing pretty good, and it does them no good whatsoever to lose sleep over whether it is better to sound British or North American.

Maybe there are certain Americans or Brits out there who think that having a certain accent makes them more valuable as a teacher, but they're wrong. But anyhow, go on ahead telling your students that they won't get any jobs or will be failures abroad without the "right" accent if that's what helps you stay in business.

I can't believe there are teachers out there who actually believe the Chinese nonsense about the standard accent. A complete pack of lies, probably made up by schools (or maybe even teachers) who would have you believe that if you don't learn the "right" accent you'll be ruined.

By the way prof, to answer your questions, I've been in China for over three years. I've been all over the country. My husband is Chinese. Don't play that game with me. If you want to disagree, that's fine, but there's no need for the hostility.

[viovio]

I'm pretty sure I read a research that concluded that there's an EFL variation of English.
EFL speakers will never have the native-like competence, but is that really that necessary? If so native from where?

Take a look at this:

www.linguistik-online.com/26_06/anchimbe.pdf

[vikdk]

ohhh deary me viovio - that's how those tainted Indian English speakers are going to do their dastardly deed - by being excellent pedagogues

[Henry_Cowell]

Steppenwolf's (Roger's) variety of English is among the most tainted I've seen here on these forums. But it provides frequent laughs, so I hope he doesn't change it.

[daodejing]

No exit,

I think there is such a thing as standard American English and it does matter a bit. For example, pronouncing "pen" and "pin" the same is non-standard (they do that in the South). So is leaving off the R at the end of words (Northeast), as is pronouncing the O in "hot" as A is pronounced in "father" (Upper midwest). When I learn Chinese I prefer to learn from someone who speaks standardly--I'd rather not sound like I'm from Yunnan or Sichuan. Some of my pronunciations in Putonghua, which I've tried to perfect, are closer to standard than many people from Yunnan, and I suspect there are some Chinese students who would be thrown off track a bit by learning from an American with a thick Southern accent. I don't think anyone should say NA English is "better" than something else, but it would be nice if people could learn the same English for the needs of international communication.

[cj750]

[sheeba]