Advice on Teaching English in Poland

I'm not going to judge your English, but...


If your English is really so minimal, how do you know what an "uneducated English accent" is?

If you've lived in Poland all your life, and your English is (as you admit yourself) "minimal", there's no way that you could tell the difference between an "underclass/council estate" accent, and a standard "local accent". Having a local accent doesn't make you uneducated; it's more to do with the amount and type of slang/dialect used, and how poor the grammar is.

Or do you really mean that the teacher dressed like a "wieśniak" or "dresiarstwo", and that makes him "sound uneducated"?

How can a accent be uneducated?

(Yeah i know it's not your quote Chodov but i cannot be arsed to look for the original post)

IME experience Poles tend not to really understand the cultural concept of accents in English.

EVERYONE has one. Really, within reason, there is no right or wrong accent, just intelligibility.

"'Standard English' is a dialect with an army and a navy." Can't remember the name of the genius who first said that.

I Think it was a book by Antony Burgess(Mouth Full Of Air) that I read about 10 years ago. It stated that the Posh English accent (that Thatcher and others speak) originated from a small area in London that prospered hugely in the early days of the industrial revolution.( I can't remember the name of the town) Ever since then, people who rise in status in the Uk / Eire adopt this accent. So it's all a load of b0L0x, like white guys with dreadlocks speaking in a Jamaicin accent.

Finchly

My mother who started learning English at the age of 40 or so claimed that Thatcher and the Queen are the best English speakers ever - she could understand everything what they say.

They are definitely not though.

While there isn't any "correct" accent, there are certainly connotations attached to some whether we want them to or not. Perpetuated by movies, it's unfortunate that a teacher with a Brooklyn accent simply won't be able to sell his product (his Native Speaker status) as well as someone who sounds like Hugh Grant, no matter which of the accents is more authentic. Northern Irish is impenetrable for most, and no CEO wants to spend hundreds of hours and thousands of zloties to sound like a Somerset farmer.

The simplified version of the IPA that's used in most EFL coursebooks has changed in recent years. For those who've use it, How Now Brown Cow teaches pronunciation with a very strict adherence to the old Received Pronunciation (The Queen/Finchley Accent), but coursebooks like the Headway series from Oxford give a more Estuary English (Kent/Essex/East London) flavour to their pronunciation exercises. It's subtle, but when you're teaching elision and linking, it helps to know what a glottal stop is and when and when NOT to use it, rather than being a Cockney stereotype is and not knowing wha' a glo'al stop is anyway.

For the backpacking idiot fly-by-night teachers; I love them. It allows me to charge double for undoing all their mistakes. The ones who sell Conversation Classes, Native Speaker Sessions and Speech Training without knowing their articles from their elbows will only make those of us with experience, qualifications and professionalism that much more valuable to the market.

Which is why my hourly rate is in three figures.

I UNDERSTAND her quite clearly here, in one of her famous chats with Hitler...

You are right in what you say but it only makes the market better for people like you, because I'm guessing you are well known and respected. I would say that for a lot of people the average "backpacking idiot" is making life harder especially as we are talking about a declining market

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and therefore Poles (obviously not me)are being taken for a ride, they don't know that there is a big difference between Peter O'Toole, Stephen Fry, Sidney Poitier, and Michael Kane. Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, The Queen, Nigella Lawson, Kate Winsletand and many many others are just a music to anyone's ear. In India nobody would like to be taught English by some traveller who thinks he can teach, o someone who just decides "to have crack at teaching and recons that he'll be good at this", therefore Indian people have a very good command of English, and even though they speak with an Indian accent one will never detect traces of some "funny" cockney accent - they will not accept that. I guess they aspire to sound like "those old colonial masters", and in this case it is a good thing. I think Radosław Sikorski's accent sounds very pleasant - Pembroke College, University of Oxford - say no more...... Let's face it - formal British English RULES, US English - some of the accents are painful to the ear. I find interesting the fact that some English speakers criticise the sounds of other countries accents never wandering how they themselves my sound. Polish apparently sound bad, but it isn't alone if we are to go that path. RICHFILTH sounds like someone with a lot to give in a language field - are you a teacher - if so good lack to you! But at the end of the day good knowledge of grammar, and ability to explain it, audio to teach proper pronunciation to avoid misleading students, and all is good.

Thank you molat, very well said.

I do not mean to pick on anyone's language usage on here, but you did make a small mistake in your typing which I think highlights the whole reason people pay for native speakers, and those without the right accent training will never be able to cure the problem.

The difference in pronunciation between "lack" and "luck" is a subtle one for Polish ears, and leads to that sort of mistake. If you had a teacher from Boston (US), the word would sound like "lack"; if you had a teacher from Yorkshire, the word would sound like "look". These 'minimal pairs' are incredibly important in English, just as they are at the end of Polish; I've lost count of the times when I said "piękna dziewczyna" only to be told that I said "piękne" or "piękna".

In the same way, I still can't really pronounce "Kasia" and "kasza" properly, despite all the attempts of my native-speaking Polish teacher. But at least Polish is more logical to write, in the sense of typing what you would say.

Each language proposes a Standard Accent when it comes to learning or Teaching languages

1) the Queen's English accent
2)The French central France accent( Tours) not the Marseille's accent
3)Hoch Deutsch not Swiss German
4) Castillano Espagnol
5) Midwest American English Accent
6)Chinese Mandarin not Wenzho Chinese
etc
Does it reflect any discrimination? Yes! But it's just easier for Language students who are beginners to have some kind of reference, i guess

Yes, & Richard E Grant & Joanna Lumley...

Music to the ear and pronouncing English properly are NOT the same thing. Many so called upper class/cut glass accented speakers may sound sophisticated, mellifluous or whatever but many are simply not pronouncing sometimes even the simplest words properly.

On average, an educated middle class Scot for example speaks better English than their counterpart in England. True.


And the irony is, the biggest culprits by far are the English themselves LOL

Elizabeth has modified her accent quite a lot over the years, partly because it sounded so ridiculous. Very few people speak like the Queen or her dreadful family. As for the dying aristocracy, their incoherent drawl is a little hard on the ears.

It is true that the English spoken and pronounced in the London 'Home Counties', or by educated speakers in the London-Oxford-Cambridge triangle is generally accepted as the prestige accent, but I think people in those areas are more aware nowadays of the richness, diversity and clarity of many other regional accents. Many accents which were seen as comical by southeners twenty years ago are now regularly heard without scorn on BBC radio, etc.

As for teaching English, it's certainly a thorny question as to what accent the teacher should present. Most teachers, as with most university-educated people, have their regional accents at least flattened a bit, partly from being exposed to the prestige accent more than others, and partly, I suspect, because it's an almost inevitable consequence of studying and mixing with people from various backgrounds. I think it only fair that students of English are given a clear model accent to emulate. Whether that is Morningside Edinburgh, Southampton, Galway or Boston (Linc. or Mass.), as long as it's clear, there shouldn't be a problem.


Very true.


I think he learned a lot from being a member of the Bullingdon Club!

Also from the SE of England in many cases.

Another classic is paw/poor/pour: all pronounced differently but again, many SE speakers will pronounce them pretty much identically.

I think the /Ʊǝ/ diphthong, as in 'pour', is disappearing from southern British English pronunciation, and that the three words you mention are indeed now homophones. Who says /tƱǝrIst/ for 'tourist' nowadays?

When people speak of accent, most of them think of it as something that 'other people' have. The truth is that we all have an accent to some degree or other, because an accent is simply the way we pronounce words. It is quite different however when it comes to regional variations; then you are talking about 'dialect', which refers to a combination of differences in accent, grammar and vocabulary. Depending on where you live in England for example, one type of baked bread could be called buns, cobs, baps or rolls or even muffins.

The most desirable accent for a teacher of English language, is undoubtedly a 'neutral' one. One which does not overtly identify itself as being of a particular social class or region. ( the terms Standard English and RP are far too often misused and associated with an exaggerated 'class' based model ).

I have worked with teachers from many parts of the world, and whilst their knowledge of English grammar may be impressive, their students are hindered in their acquisition of spoken English by exposure to, and therefore a role modelling of a strong regional accent or dialect. American, Australian, Afrikaans and German are perhaps some of the most obvious, but there are so many other nationalities too numerous to mention, who present similar problems.

A neutral accent is usually created by a combination of upbringing, geographical location, interaction with others, and an almost subconscious assimilation of elements which are most desirable for clarity, and a gradual discarding of those which are not. It is clearly the most effective model which ESL/EFL students should be exposed to in their English language studies, if they wish to speak English in its most internationally recognised and accepted form.

Mmm. What about morning/mourning? Many don't differentiate - I do though. Then again, Scots & Irish differentiate between witch/which etc and that probably sounds odd to many English speakers.


Well put, yes.

So do I, perhaps because it is, I'm glad to say, an unusual word for me, but the gradual disappearance of the /Ʊǝ/ sound among southern English speakers is generally recognised by phoneticians. It would be interesting to listen to bereavement counsellors in London!

Mourning and morning are quite different sounds for me as a Scot. OWE and AWE are clearly different.

Quite interesting about the SE England comment of "luck" and "lack". I come from as south-east as you can get (Margate) and you don't hear "you lacky barsteward" as often as Guy Ritchie films would have you believe.

As for the "neutral" accent; there are a few variations among the accents that are almost impossible to consolidate into a hyper-accent of International English. The r-colouring of American accents means that four, more, saw and door all have that little twang at the end that reminds of a braying seal. Similarly, the flat a of bath (ɑ for spa, rather than a for hat) sounds distinctly odd for many native speakers, let alone foreigners, even if it's an element of my own accent.

Despite most foreigners expressing a specific desire for a "British" accent as opposed to an American (or Australian or South African or other colonial* tongue), those two features are things that most Poles have trouble with, and often refuse to concentrate on, seeing it as a "waste of time" or "I'll never learn it".

*it's a joke, live with it.

My sister-in-law gives the end r its full value (as the jargon goes) and she's from Plymouth (UK).

That's west enough to get west country rhoticity though isn't it?

Definitely. Her mother never left Devon in her life and she had the real West Country burr. Her father went to London once, during the war, so his accent wasn't quite as strong.

Ha Ha! *

The a sound for me is the same in all of these!

* or should that be haw haw? ; )

For me, saw doesn't even belong with the other three. Very different pronunciation in American English. When I say I park my car, I pronounce the r's.


But not for me. Again, they're very different.

The difference in pronunciation is one of the things that make English so rich, and so frustrating for non native speakers.

quoth Richfilth


There's no 'r' at the end of saw in any US pronunciation that I've ever heard. Maybe you're thinking 'sore'? It's not a 'twang'. A twang is pronouncing thing as 'thang' and/or tire as tar and/or three as thry (rhymes with cry) It's an r - a great letter that many British people are unreasonably prejudiced against. Let go of the hate and learn to love your inner r.

My God! Don't you guys have ANYTHING better to do than discuss the IPA! This is sooooo anal!