Teaching American English
March 29th, 2006 by MarkOne thing David questioned about my school last week is why my boss is looking for North American teachers as opposed to British, Australian or other native English speakers. I can completely understand how this sort of policy would be annoying to those it excluded, much like the fact that high paying IELTS jobs prefer teachers from the UK or commonwealth countries is frustrating for some Americans. There’s no doubt that the preference of schools skews heavily towards American English. However, I think there are a few rational reasons for this.
- There are a lot of Americans- 67% of all native English speakers are Americans. Another 5% are Canadians.
- American speakers are wealthier on average than other English speakers. The amount of money English speakers control is a crucial reason, if not the reason so many people around the world study English. There are more native Spanish and native Mandarin speakers around the world, but as they represent smaller markets to sell to and do business with, neither of those languages have achieved anything close to the dominance English has.
- The US has the best colleges in the world. According to SJTU, seventeen out of the top twenty are in the US. While it’s ridiculous for Asian parents to expect their children to get into Yale or MIT, many secretly harbor that hope. Even disregarding the very top schools, there are still more east Asians and foreigners in general that choose to study abroad in the US than in any other country.
- There is some regional variation in dialects of English in the US, but not nearly as much as in the UK.
- Due to mass media, the British, Australians, and other English speakers understand US English much better than Americans understand other English dialects. The first time I saw an episode from a British TV series (The Young Ones) when I was thirteen, I couldn’t understand any of it. Many of my classmates couldn’t either. I would be very surprised to hear of any British or Australian thirteen-year-olds who saw an episode of Friends and couldn’t understand it due to the American English.
At my particular school, there is an even bigger reason why it would be difficult for non N. American teachers. All of the CDs our first year students listen to have Ron’s voice on them. Even the small differences between his accent and mine are enough to cause difficulties at times. When I give his first semester students oral spelling quizzes (of words they’ve never heard), they make about 15% more errors than when he gives them quizzes. My own students struggle a bit with “-orr-” words, such as “tomorrow” since I pronounce them differently than Ron does on the CD. There would be massive problems for students of teachers who speak with a British (or god help us an Irish) accent. Learning how to pronounce R’s is already onerously difficult. Most students get it within a month, but some take several. Learning from a teacher who pronounced them radically differently than the CD did, would be the straw that last back-breaking straw for most of our students. Aside from accent differences, there are also many spelling differences (which would wreak havoc on our phonics system), word usage differences, and grammatical differences (especially with perfect tenses). Since all of our materials use American spelling, word usage and grammar, it would be very confusing for students if our teachers did not.
Most of the problems described above disappear quickly as students advance to higher levels. When I give Ron’s third semester students oral spelling quizzes, they perform just as well as they do when he gives the quizzes. A British accent might still be a bit difficult for them at that point; but the higher their level, the easier it would be for them to learn how to understand one. I completely agree with David that the more different kinds of accents the students can understand, the better. As it is now, my school’s students keep the same teacher from their first class all the way through graduation. If there were a way to hire a small number of teachers from the UK and commonwealth and have each student learn from them during their third year of study, there would be some definite advantages. The students could probably adjust to a new accent pretty easily at that level, and they could continue to get exposure to UK accents through our OUP materials in their final year. The problem with this system, is that I can’t imagine any teacher wanting to be the “token British guy” and just teach one year of everybody’s classes. It is something worth some serious thought, though. Here are some advantages of learning British English:
- Even in the US, British English is the “prestige dialect”. Amazingly, this isn’t limited to RP. Even “lower class” British dialects are treated as signs of culture, refinement and coolness
- British literature is also prestigious. All over the English speaking world, British literature is studied. The English, on the other hand, study far less American literature.
- Many movies and television programs that deal with scenes of a historical or fantasy/RPG nature, employ British or pseudo-British accents.
- 60,000,000 people is still a lot of people living in the UK.
- The IELTS, which is rapidly becoming the dominant test for non-native English speakers wanting to go to college in English speaking places, uses British English.
March 29th, 2006 at 6:49 pm
Mark, you make some well reasoned and valid points. The main points I would add are:
1. A good English teacher should be aware of the major differences between British and American English and point these out to the students were necessary. For children at lower levels it is probably best to be consistent and avoid confusion. However, once students get exposed to a wider range of English then they will inevitably need to know some of the differences.
In some cases you can just point out generalities such as color/colour applying to any words that end with -or/-our. For differences that are less common then the teacher could just point them out as they are encountered.
2. Students are just as likely to use the English they learn to speak to non-native English speakers. For example if a Taiwanese person goes to Korea, Thailand or Germany for business the chances are that English will be the common language.
3. While the US has many excellent higher education institutions a significant percentage of students are still going to choose to study elsewhere. Even if students do go to the US to study previous exposure to a wide range of English accents is going to help them adjust.
March 30th, 2006 at 3:22 am
The more I think about this issue, the more I think the advantages of exposure to more dialects of English is worth more than keeping the same teacher for four years. Maybe after just two years, the students could start switching teachers once per year. It will definitely be an uphill battle to convince Ron, though.
What about your second point? I’m assuming you aren’t suggesting studying the accent and grammar of low-level Japanese learners of English or something like that. What do you think would best prepare students to be able to understand mistakes made by other non-native speakers?
March 30th, 2006 at 11:04 am
In a student-centered lesson where the students spend a lot of time talking to each other is probably the best exposure students can get to non-native speakers. As a teacher you need to encourage peer correction and model the target language very clearly to ensure they don’t end up reinforcing common mistakes.
February 2nd, 2007 at 10:00 am
Exposure to a single accent isn’t the best way to go in my opinion as well, since some or most of the students will go overseas and not understand the English.
February 2nd, 2007 at 4:44 pm
I have discussed the matter with my wife, who has taught for 5 years and who has an MA in Education, and she agrees that the best way to learn English is to have a variety of accents.
February 2nd, 2007 at 7:22 pm
The real questions are how much of a variety and how soon. Three years ago, though, I would have been frustrated and overwhelmed if my Chinese input were split between Tawianese, Shandong, Dongbei, Shanghai, and Xi’an accents. Right now, though, I really like to hear a larger variety of Chinese accents.
March 12th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
So you are saying it is better to hire someone who has less understanding and knowledge of English accents than those who have a wide range of knowledge and understanding?
It’s better to hire someone who ONLY understands American TV shows rather than someone who can understand (and explain the difference of sounds and words)the Young Ones AND Friends? Come On!
If they only want to go to the US fine, but really!
March 12th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
I think you’re missing the point a bit. What I was saying was, that from the students’ perspective, it’s better to speak a form of English that’s understood all around the world, than one that isn’t.
Regardless of the language in question, speakers of less dominant dialects tend to be more familiar with the dominant dialect than visa-versa. You could have made the same argument with German, saying that it’s better to hire teachers who speak Swiss German than teachers from Germany due to the fact that they “can understand and explain the difference of sounds and words” between the two dialects. However, most students would be better served by acquiring phonics and diction that match “standard” German as closely as possible.
March 13th, 2007 at 5:26 am
Hmm. Maybe, but I still find it difficult that you are saying a lack of knowledge of the world language these guys are teaching is somehow a benefit. I would have no problem with an Irish teacher either. I think what is needed is low accent clear speakers. I would rather a low accent Irish than a high accented Texan. The same for IELTS. There should be no barrier to Americans. I would rather have a clear speaking low accent American than than a highly accented Commonwealth teacher too. But perhaps we are not going to agree on this. By the way, I am having trouble with apostrophes in Firefox. It brings up a search box.
March 13th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
I would never consider a lack of knowledge of world accents is a benefit. Hopefully, teachers living in Taiwan would have a fair amount of exposure to speakers from different places. I was saying that the comparative lack of exposure of the majority of native English speakers to non-American speech is a reason to learn it.
When you say “low accent”, my question is a “low accent” from what? In my way of thinking an accent that’s close to what’s used by the majority of English speakers around the world is the best. That accent would be anything from the so-called “neutral” western and mid-western part of the US or Canada. A Texan accent would not be that accent. Still, there are more Texans than Australians in the world (Wikipedia, 2000), so Texans aren’t as small of a group as one might think.
One thing that’s making it easier for many Texas as well as Irish and Australians is that all three groups diverge quite a bit less from the accent dominant on TV than they did 50 years ago. A teacher whose speech is fairly close to “standard” won’t have too many problems at most schools.
In my buxiban program, on the other hand, phonics is the primary part of the curriculum in the first semester. Any non-rhotic speaker would have a very difficult time teaching in my program. The students who are absolute beginners already have a very difficult time without the accent on the phonics sections of their CDs being completely different from the accent used by the teacher giving them phonics quizzes.
It may be of interest, though, that one of my partners in the school is a British guy. He teaches the advanced classes and writing classes. Since his classes aren’t focussed on phonics, there are very few problems. His students are also much more advanced than mine are. Several have lived abroad, and others have studied for 5 years or more. He has mentioned being a bit frustrated at occasionally having to use a more American sounding “short a” in order to be understood, though.
July 22nd, 2008 at 6:50 am
UK and American words are said the same so why the hell spell them differently its stupid and causes unwanted confusion