Does your dc get taught at school by someone they don’t understand?

[Greymacaw]

Reading the Times today and an article came up about the U.K. poaching teachers from other countries.

Many of the comments include parents saying their dc are taught by teachers with such a thick accent the dc aren’t learning. This happened to me in a recent masters I did.
could not for the life of me understand the teacher but as an adult I was able to push for more information where I needed it and work around the situation.

Was frustrating but I can’t imagine how hard it would be if I was struggling to under for my GCSEs or a levels. Do people hiring not take these things into account?!

She's not talking in Spanish constantly is she? When she's speaking English,this is where my daughter also struggles.

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ChristianHornersGlisteningFinger · Today 10:25
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I’m always sceptical about people who say they can’t understand strong accents”

Hmmm. Was listening to Shirley Henderson playing a Scottish girl in an old Christmas ghost story on Iplayer this weekend. Really, really struggled and got maybe one in every three words.

We spend much of our time in Scotland, moving up permanently soon so very familiar with mid-Scottish accents, which are beautiful.

Quite possibly the character was using a lot of dialect words and grammatical constructions. That would not be acceptable in a teacher.

I had kids over recently- they all understood me perfectly fine. Their parents asked me to repeat things to them, though.
I have a foreign accent. Not sure how thick, as I've lived in the country for over twenty years, studied here for my degree, etc.

My point is, ime, children struggle much less with that compared to adults. They seem to adapt to the different sounds much quicker.

It takes time to time the ear in. We moved to Glasgow from the west midlands and the kids (5 and 1 at the time) took a while to pick up an understanding of classmates and teachers' accents. They're now fine with it, as are we but the grandparents struggle when they visit because they haven't tuned in.

I also had to tune into the local accents in the West mids (and cadence/speed) after living in the south west for 10 years.

If it's a consistent teacher kids should adapt relatively quickly and if they don't I'd want to look at hearing tests and assessment of auditory processing as it might be flagging something.

She should mostly be speaking in Spanish, very little needs to be explained in English in most modern language teaching. English grammar isn't particularly useful as a direct comparator.

Beyond the absolute beginnings I'd expect most of the lesson to be conducted in the target language, vocab lists would be written rather than spoken??

I had it at masters level and just could not understand what the lecturer said. Luckily there I could watch previews of all modules first so avoided their module.
People did complain to the faculty about it.

My Dd, secondary school is always coming home complaining that her English teacher is in fact Canadian and makes several mistakes in grammar and pronunciation of British English....

when I was 15/16 so 12-13 years ago, we briefly had a French teacher, who was from Quebec. So still spoke French but a slightly different French, bit strange tbh.

i also had an English teacher who was French, her English was impeccable. Better than one of the other English teachers I had, who told me I had spelt shiny wrong and I should look it up in a dictionary. She also got finish and Finnish mixed up, and rather a lot of other words.

i am pretty good at understanding accents, most of the time, my main issue is with English native speakers, particularly ones I know, half the time I don’t know what they say, it takes me awhile to process what they’ve said.

also, if they are non native English speaking teachers, do they not have to do a language test? At least that’s what I thought. I had a dentist that had a thick accent, that I could only understand when I was watching his mouth, but he had a very good ielts score. I presume teachers need to do the same test if English is not their first language.

Surely something could be logged if dc are sitting exams as these teachers have to be a disadvantage over any dc who have had a teacher who speaks coherent English?

No. It’s also not ‘logged’ if your child doesn’t have a teacher for that subject at all, which is also happening.

Schools are not picking teachers who can’t be understood from a field of candidates who both know their subject and can communicate with crystal clarity. Often they may be the only applicant, or the alternative doesn’t know the subject being taught at all.

This is what a critical shortage of teachers looks like.

But she is teaching your son, and not YOU, Spanish.

I expect the teacher works harder to be understood. If children at high school do not understand what they are supposed to be doing it would surely become clear very quickly and not much would be getting done?

Some people just struggle with accents, it's not lack of tolerance or laziness. I have struggled my whole life, my grandad who I saw regularly and loved dearly had a very thick, rural Irish accent and 80% of the time I just nodded politely when he spoke to m. My grandma from a different area of Ireland wasn't a problem. What does happen is I get embarrassed repeatedly asking the person to repeat themselves ( because I don't want to appear intolerant or lazy) and eventually just avoid that person.

As it turns out DD has autism and sensory / audial processing difficulties and I wonder whether it's an offshot of that, she process things much better in writing and I've always used the subtitles on the TV as I don't always catch what's being said.

Having worked in schools with teachers with thick accents it is a challenge particularly for those with slower processing.

To be clear. I do not mean any accent, lots of people have accents but you can still understand them. My mum has an accent but has never had anyone not understand her. I mean an accent that is so heavy dc can’t understand the teacher in a classroom setting which then leads to an inferior education.

fair enough there aren’t enough teachers but surely the dc in whole classes who can’t understand their teachers should be acknowledged as having a disadvantage. A bit like if you’re ill it’s often acknowledged you wouldn’t do as well as you could have done.

i know I was at a disadvantage in my masters but I was ok to reach out to other resources. I’m an adult who chose to be in that class though. Can’t imagine being forced to learn that way.

What acknowledgement do you want?

@noblegiraffe perhaps grade being lifted as a result to help those disadvantaged by a government not willing to invest in better quality teaching?! Letter to universities to explain that the dc was disadvantaged due to having a teacher that they weren’t able to understand.

I’m not sure why people can’t see that this is totally unfair that some dc have teachers who can be easily understood and some dc don’t, it is a disadvantage and these are exam results that you use for a long time after school?

perhaps grade being lifted as a result to help those disadvantaged by a government not willing to invest in better quality teaching?!

Absolutely zero chance of this happening. The government do not want to acknowledge any impact of the lack of teachers on education.

There is a box on UCAS applications for additional information and the school can note that e.g. there wasn’t a teacher for 6 months and the class had to teach themselves the A-level course. I’ve had to write that on a few applications this year. The teacher being crap doesn’t get noted though.

We're is S London. Head at primary was grammatically incorrect and couldn't pronounce 'th'. I hated it. Dialect or not it's wrong and made me cringe.

No doubt I've made a mistake in the post to bite me on the arse!

One of my DDs GCSE teachers has a really strong Scottish accent. She said that she and most of the class can barely understand a word he says. As I had a Scottish grandmother with a very strong accent I assumed she was exaggerating and urged her to concentrate more and she will gradually tune in to what he is saying.

Then we had parents evening over Zoom. DH and I looked at each other and realised that neither of us had understood a word he had said. He was a little easier to understand when we met him face to face but I still had to really concentrate to work out the individual words he was saying.

A lot of the parents were going mad about it in the year group WhatsApp page and many have since got a tutor in place to help with the subject.

I am awful at understanding accents. Tbh I've always just assumed it was a part if my dyslexia. My GCSE chemistry teacher could have been speaking another language for all I know.

I'll never understand why if I say I haven't heard something the response is to look around and mumble the same thing at the same volume. I want to scream Look at me and enunciate.

I want to scream Look at me and enunciate.

A lot of actors on tv seem unable to enunciate properly these days. So many of them seem to mumble. It's not just me getting older - if you watch, for example, Patrick Stewart in old Trek episodes, the difference is noticeable. Or almost any older actor, really.

Thanks @noblegiraffe good to know there is a tick box available for applications to university. Hope it’s used!

can’t believe people are paying tutors to solve the problem as well. The whole system seems a mess. Maybe it will get sorted after the election. Won’t hold my breath though.

Read again. Honestly 🙄🤦‍♀️😬😂

Yes, maths. Which he struggles with anyway so it is making it very hard for him to learn.

I remember when I had job interview in Scotland. I am from abroad but have spoken English many years. The taxi driver was very chatty and I couldn't understand anything he said. I just said "yes, yes".