AIBU to feedback to school about teachers use of glottal stops

Do people care about their children learning to speak, read and write correctly? Yes, some people do.

Appalling. My daughter’s psychology teacher used to say ‘Fred’ instead of ‘thread’ which got really confusing in a lesson about Fred and Rose West. My daughter referred to her teacher as a ‘thucking idiot’!

I was taught to speak French with a fairly decent accent.

When I tried to teach French to kids in SE England they looked at me as if I had two heads.

They said things like "Oovrai la pawte" so I ended up having to say things in a faux accent so they could understand me..

Wow. This is an ignorant thing to think and an appalling thing to say.

The Sutton Trust have done some great research on this, but I guess you’ve already made your mind up www.suttontrust.com/our-research/speaking-up-accents-social-mobility/

My friends daughter was livid when her year through streak of 10/10 in the weekly spelling test was broken when she got 9/10, losing a mark for spelling ‘clothes’, ‘cloves’. The teacher pronounced ‘clothes’ as ‘cloves’. Her mother asked her what possessed her to write a word that hadn’t been in the list of words to learn. The daughter said she spelt the words she was told to write down.

She said the teacher's French pronunciation is so poor that she is completely baffled how she ever qualified to teach it.

@User5306921 I don't recall any test of my MFL pronunciation when I trained. Tbf teacher training does not focus on (nor teach) the subject to be taught as a rule. MFL teachers are in short supply, sadly. Even when I trained (many years ago) the colleagues I trained with were mostly picking up their second MFL from scratch (I actually had two to a decent level but I was the only one, tho obvs a German native speaker was better at German than I was).

All that said, it's poor that the teacher’s French is so weak and that class sounds as tho it is being failed. They need to get your friend in as an assistante.

@mindutopia "date of bird" made me laugh, sorry! but actually that's appalling.

I can't bear an Essex accent. Everyone just sounds so thick.

That's got absolutely nothing to do with the glottal stop. As a teacher you'd think you might be past perpetuating lazy ideas about speech.

As a young student teacher in an observed lesson I was picked up on saying wa’er instead of waTer. I grew up with a very colloquial Ayrshire accent. My head teacher said “och most of the weans round here say jaicket and if that’s all they picked you up on you’re doing great!”

Years later my own DC were writing poetry in Scots dialect

It's not a 'lack of enunciation' at all, it's a form of normal articulation.

Sheridan will cope just fine, don't worry.

A glottal stop is a phonological feature of regional speech and as such I think it would be very unreasonable to criticise an individual on this basis. It actually takes more effort in the vocal cords to produce one than not therefore the idea it’s sloppy speech is quite illogical.
Aside from being a really unkind criticism to make on a teacher who is likely working hard to educate your child, it’s also very classist. You might want to look up the views of linguists David Crystal and Peter Trudgill on the topic or maybe consider taking A level English Language where you can learn more about accent prejudice and its origins.

Not having a go here, just trying to understand the objective. What would you want to happen as a result of the complaint?

I'm with you, OP. I'm am ex teacher who did a PG dyslexia qualification (at my own expense as ds is dyslexic). In the SE many children can't distinguish between Phil and feel for eg. I loathe it. My tutor said it's due to accent. I disagree. Have had some ridiculous spellings of words children are sure they've heard correctly due to Estuary English feeow as feel because that's how they hear it for eg. We owe it to the children to give them the best chance to succeed.

Lots of people may disagree with me. I want my children to be taught properly. And yes, that includes knowing that "should of" is incorrect. How many times at moderation have I seen teachers have written it as feedback in children's books?

This is one of those things which is neither reasonable or unreasonable. Proper spelling and enunciation must be balanced with regional accents. Neither are wrong.

I'd let the teacher crack on and, if it bothers you, you can correct your child at home.

South East Scotland?

🤣🤣🤣

I much prefer a British glottal stop to the American 'd' sound my children have picked up e.g. baʔery vs baddery for battery., waʔer vs wadder for water.

South east Scotland?

Ain't ya gorr nothin be'er ter compain abar?

I would complain.

To be fair, it must be very confusing for the kids learning to decode.
I'd say you can just say it correctly at home.

A friend of mine is French and one of her daughter's subjects is French at school. Her daughter is fluent in French and is having huge problems trying to understand what the French teacher is trying to say. Her mother went to the school and was at a complete loss when she tried to speak to the teacher herself too. She said the teacher's French pronunciation is so poor that she is completely baffled how she ever qualified to teach it.
I have visions of that class going to France and trying to speak the language while the French shake their heads wondering what language they are speaking!

I'm NE Scotland and we don't do this but I have a friend from north of Inverness who sort of does this. It's hard to explain

Why would you do that?

Many accents have them. They’re also common in Estuary English, Geordie and Glaswegian.

OP if you complain they’re unlikely to take it seriously and I very much doubt the teacher is going to try to change their accent to please you.

I'm a working class person born and raised in the west of Scotland and can confirm that dropping the t is entirely a part of our accent - it's not buTTer, it's bu'er, not kiTTen but ki'en.