Let’s start with a quick question: do you have an accent? Think for a moment, yes or no?
I ask this question to everyone who attends my teacher training courses. Alison answered “no”, but most people answer “yes”. And those people are right…
What is an accent?
An accent is a particular way of speaking. It tells the listener something about the background of the speaker. More precisely, it tells the listener social and regional information about that person. Regional information is where the speaker is from and social information is about their cultural and educational background. In listening to someone speak, then, we might infer (rightly or wrongly) that they are Japanese or Scottish, from London or Manchester. SO, if all of this information is communicated just by someone starting to speak, why did Alison say that she doesn’t have an accent?
Alison’s accent is quite neutral. You could guess that she’s probably from the South East of England, but you couldn’t be sure. Her accent doesn’t reveal any strong regional information. Instead, it tells us that she has learned to speak in a certain way at school or university. The fact that such information was communicated just through her speech, suggests that Alison does in fact have an accent… just like everybody else! You can’t escape it. From your perspective, the only people who don’t have an accent are those with the same accent.
Learning about your own accent
Although everyone has an accent, most people are not very aware of what makes their accent distinctive. People can usually list a couple of features of different accents and why they are different, but cannot readily list features of their own. This is something that I have been trying to help with in recent teacher training courses. The remainder of this post is about how one simple activity can help to achieve just that!
The activity
In groups of three, each person had to speak for one minute to one minute and a half about a topic they were interested in. The two listeners made notes on anything they noticed about the speaker’s pronunciation, e.g. individual sounds, pronunciation of particular words, etc. In order, the groups then discussed what they’d noticed. The speaker first had to say what features of their accent they were aware of, if any. Then the listeners pointed out what they had noticed, with my help where needed. After the groups had been through each person, the speaker summarised what they had learned about their accent for the group.
What did we notice?
There were some interesting results. From the demonstration of the activity, the groups noticed the following as distinctive about my accent, for example:
· The /o/ (as in “phone”)
· An occasional slight trilled /r/ in words like “great”
· The difference between /ɪ/ (sit) and /ɛ/ (set) is quite small
· The way the pronunciation of “e” changes from /ɛ/ to the more open, r-coloured /ɛ̝ɹ/ when an “r” follows it (as in “earth”)
· My accent “is not really Scottish” (I beg to differ!)
They were then able to list some features of their own accents, much of which they’d never considered before. We looked at some of these and compared how we pronounce them as a group. Turns out there was a lot of variety and moments of “Really? You say it like that?”!
Why is this useful?
Helping teachers develop greater awareness of their own accents has clear benefits. The following list was compiled by the teachers who took part in the above activity. Positives include:
· Being better able to grade language
· Understanding differences between accents and the range of variation
· Building awareness that all accents will be ‘different’ to someone
· Helping pronunciation teaching in class through comparing own accent with course book audio
· Highlighting differences between different accents for learners
Why not try this activity in the staffroom or with your trainees and see what you learn? Let us know in the comments below! And Alison? She now says that she has an accent.
If you’re looking for tips regarding teaching pronunciation, check out Laura Patsko’s Ten Top Tips for Teaching Pronunciation!