Should you pay attention to your pronunciation as an ESL Teacher

Should you pay attention to your pronunciation as an ESL teacher?

So The obvious straight answer for this question might be a "yes". And I agree with this but hold on for a second, because I believe there are also situations whereby this is a No. especially since we live in a society of utmost subjectivity. And While I’ll explain everything in a bit, saying it’s not always yes, isn’t to say that I agree with wrong pronunciations if there’s such a thing. Accents come as a result of many factors; where you live, who you listen to, who your teacher is, amongst other.

So I’m going to be talking about some Interesting Definitions, Regional differences, How it applies to getting a job as an ESL Teacher, plus how it applies to actual teaching and these are very  important things that could render to you a new perspective as well.

DEFINITIONS

According to google, “the principal method of human communication, consisting of words used in a structured and conventional way and conveyed by speech, writing, or gesture“.

It is very essential to know that the primary purpose of a language is to enable communication. No matter how it’s done, if there’s a sender, a receiver and understanding, it’s complete. It doesn’t matter wether it’s stone throwing or pulling carrots. Wether it’s potato or potato, tomato or tomato.

Languages come with accents, so again let's go to google. According to google.com "an accent is a distinctive mode of pronunciation of a language, especially one associated with a particular nation, locality, or social class."

Huh! you see that second part of this definition, that is where we get the “Zee and Zed, Zebra and Z3bra” sounds. That is where we get pop and pap sounds. However, while there is only one French language and one Italian language, there’s also only one english language.

It is worthy to not that the english language has no one manual and no one was employed designated law enforcer of this great language spoken by many.

REGIONAL DIFFERENCES

So you would agree with me that there are many different pronunciations and they differ based on the region in which you grew up. That’s how a person gets their accent. And so when someone says that your pronunciation is wrong, they are basically saying that you have a different accent than mine, although they might not even know that’s what they are saying exactly. I had a conversation with “The Language Lady” you can check out her YouTube right here, and one profound thing she said is that “depending on your English accent comes with people’s perspective an opinion of how smart you are and their cultural misconception of you”. That is so profound and true. Sometimes people measure you by your accent.

So let’s say that, there’s a basic British accent, the American, Canadian, there’s Australian, Irish, and many more. Even within these specific countries, you can identify people within different regions having different pronunciations. 

Personally I grew up in a country that teaches the British English curriculum so the phonics I was taught correspond to the British way of pronouncing words.

ACQUIRING A JOB

Now let’s talk about this phrase, “Native” as it applies to getting a job as an ESL Teacher because this is one of the things I see a lot when ads are posted for ESL position particularly in China. Because the great assumption is that a native speaks the best English and it sounds more pleasing and authentic. And might be true in some cases although not all. However to the best of my knowledge, native in these ads doesn’t first refer to how you speak because most of the people that require these teachers aren’t necessarily from an English speaking country anyways.

My great opinion is that, and hear me out for a moment, that this is from first of all a marketing perspective. Because to their customers it would be easier to say, “hey, our teacher is from a native country and speaks the best English, we’re the best so pay us more”. So you would see ads with salary specifications that say “Native - 35000 RMB, Non-native 18,000 RMB” for the same role. Is that fair? Well while it might be discriminating, success still isn’t illegal anyways. So while I wish things were different and hence I don’t concur with this, I don’t disagree either. Because I know how important marketing is and how powerful a tool this could be for employers. As someone who is the only foreigner and particularly African in a region where most people have never seen a foreigner, this is a huge marketing sell for the school I work for. Because I’m automatically a default attraction magnet for the school and to confirm that for you, when I first came to this school, there were 140 students, after the first year, there were over 300 kids and class sizes had to be bumped up and even some rooms converted.

My second assumption also would be that this is done because it would be worry free and they don’t have to deal with certain possible complications of trying to ascertain wether this teacher is teaching the right thing or not.

In conclusion however, usually after the school verifies that you’re worth it, they usually pay you what you’re worth. So if you’re looking for an ESL Job particularly outside your country, especially in China, keep these truths at the back of your mind.

HOW IT APPLIES TO BEING A TEACHER and what you should know

Under this category I want to talk about 4 things.

Your curriculum, consistency, your audience and effectiveness

1. The curriculum: I’ll say the least on this topic. Before progress can be measured, expectations must be defined. Every school has its particular curriculum. Wether it’s the British or American system, Your pronunciation is not a problem unless it contradicts with your designated curriculum. So if you’re teaching something not expected of you in your particular region, then you should probably pay attention, else I don’t see what the fuss is.

2. Consistency: An accent is a habitual thing and is not easy to change. How weird is it to teach one thing and speak in another way. While there are people from so called “native speaking” countries, this also means there are people who by default don’t  have to pay attention to their way of speaking while teaching, at least presumably.  Because they have the right pronunciations baked into them right from childhood. But see, teaching and speaking aren’t exactly the same thing, which I will explain in another point very soon. So even being a native speaker means you have to sometimes teach in a manner that is parallel to your normal way of speaking. Because don’t make a mistake of thinking teaching English in an English school is the same as teaching English as a Second Language.]

3. Your audience: If most of your students are kids they have a clean slate and hence what you teach them from the beginning will build a foundation for them, so basically they take what you teach as such. However if they are older, they probably have already formed a basic pattern of pronouncing words. And sometimes they take what you teach, other times they don’t. In my experience of handling a lot of teachers who have gone to school and learned from different universities, the one significant pattern is that for each one of them their first instinct is always to drop what I teach them and resort to their former school training or “habit”. Personally I don’t think this is a big deal, because I always hear and understand what they say. Because the interesting thing is that if you’ve been speaking english for a really long time, you can hear clearly a vast majority of accents. The problem comes from when the student begins to second guess the teacher. When I speak as I normally would, they don’t understand me, when I slow it down they begin to second guess me. Fascinating isn’t it?

John C. Maxwell - “a lecturer complicates things, a teacher simplifies it”

4. Effectiveness: one of the things I’ve learned from being a teacher is that sometimes you have to use unconventional methods to achieve your goal. Mostly because real world use case is sometimes different from the learning environment and it’s situations. In my experience, sometimes being effective requires circumventing standardized methods of doing things because not all audiences are the same. Because when you think about it, standards are made to give you a baseline which is able to appeal to a greater audience, but sometimes it doesn’t. So for example, if you’re an ESL teacher it’s not a good idea to speak the local dialect of the student during the class particularly preschool learners, but I do sometimes because I don’t have an assistant who is always there, so circumvented. For example during a phonics lesson, I’ll first teach the pronunciation of a word differently with a resounding consonant before I make it silent to let the students get a fair idea, I find that this works best in most cases and my students get it much better, again, circumvented. So for example in one instance I had a little conversation with my teaching assistant about a while back about the word swing and she was wondering about the g at the end of the word. As to how to teach it. And while you may say it’s a silent g, the little kids who have to learn this don’t even know what a silent or low sound consonant is. While they keep saying "swin" "swin", you’re left with no choice to let them know swing with a strong g before eventually diffusing it. Of course with explanations along the way. Circumvention. See, don’t be too quick to bring down someone’s fence until you know why it was put up. Sometimes you have to do what it takes to be effective.

CONCLUSION

Let’s try and conclude this. There’s a high chance if you’re a "native" you’ve never had to wonder about this question. But for others, while I will say Yes you indeed have to pay attention to your pronunciation because it’s important to teach the right thing relative to the particular curriculum you have, I will also say No, not as in indulging negligence, but rather understanding that you’re always trying to teach things right to the best of your ability, you know your audience best and I know that you’ll do your due diligence and do the right thing. Right? Right?