Pronunciation is absolutely one of my favorite “subjects” to teach to English learners (children and adults alike), but it is also one of the most controversial—both socially, for the learners themselves, and pedagogically, for classroom teachers and other educators. Let’s address the social aspect first. Everyone – even native speakers – has an “accent” when they talk; we simply don’t notice our own!
There is no single “right” accent, universally. It is also important not to make students feel like they are “bad” or “wrong” if they speak with a non-standard accent that does not conform to local norms. Your accent is a part of your identity, your heritage, your home, and your personality, and just like those things cannot and should not be “reduced,” neither can or should an accent.
However, as we seek to grow and learn, we can add to our experiences, to our sense of identity, and we can add additional pronunciation systems to our language “tool belt,” so to speak. As we improve our dexterity in using those “tools,” we can choose to use them or not use them as a given situation requires. It is our job as educators to empower our students with this additional skill set. And the simple truth is, pronunciation has a direct link to literacy, which brings us to point number two.
When we teach phonics in the primary grades, we are teaching pronunciation. For older students, our instruction typically becomes less explicit. But how often do we tell students to “sound it out” when they ask how to spell a word? If Spanish speakers are unaware of the difference between the sounds /b/ and /v/, why are we surprised that they use the letters interchangeably? Vietnamese speakers are unaccustomed to words ending in a consonant, so they often may not perceive final consonants when listening to native English speakers, and thus omit those consonants when speaking (even when reading aloud and seeing the letter!). As such, they may also be likely to omit the corresponding letters upon “sounding it out” when writing. This also creates a disconnect between the word they see when reading and the word they expect to see based on what they think the word is supposed to sound like, all of which influences reading comprehension. The only way to help is via explicit instruction, and even that will take patience and diligence on your part and theirs.
As such, the real question is not whether we teach pronunciation as a regular part of English language arts, but how. Stay tuned for future posts with lots of easy, fun and effective strategies on teaching pronunciation in the classroom!
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I teach adults ESL at a non profit, Connections for Women and their Families, in Summit NJ. One of my students was a young French woman. She wanted to lose her beautiful French accent. The entire class said “are you crazy?”. Some accents are better than others.
It is interesting that your class reacted so strongly to your student who wanted to ‘lose’ her accent. I would argue that some accents are not ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than others, and that our opinions about various ways of speaking (like dialects or accents) are often a deeper reflection about the speaker and their culture or heritage. I think Laura’s point above is a good one– there is no single ‘right’ accent. Just as we should take pride in our identity and the place we are from, we should take pride in the way that we speak.
This recent Washington Post article is raises some interesting questions about accents and language learning. Be sure to check the responses, but be forwarned that some may offend.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/learning/accented-teachers-may-be-bette.html
I teach a class of bilingual students who are native speakers of Spanish. I am NOT a native speaker. When I teach them pronunciation, I do teach them to keep the /s/ at the end of their words (such as dos, mas, and so on), but solely to help them remember to spell the words with the letter s at the end. I also distinguish for them the /b/ and /v/ sound as we do in English, but again, solely for the purpose of helping them recognize those words when they spell. Having said that, I make sure they know that their culture and way of speaking Spanish is just as valid and valuable as anyone else’s. At the end of the day, when we’re having our fun, casual conversations, we all drop the es, and we use the soft, warm, fuzzy /b/ and /v/, and we enjoy our chats! That’s as it should be.
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