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?!

Really? Why is a strong Chinese accent any less comprehensible than a strong Geordie or Irish or Newfoundland one, if the grammar is correct?

And how would you determine, before taking this foreign job, that your ‘British accent’ was insufficiently ‘heavy’ to prevent people of other nationalities understanding you? Go out and grab passing foreigners on the street before you pack, for a quickie comprehension test?

By strong accent, I mean any strong accent to which you are not accustomed. I did not specify a nationality. Your implications is that I am at fault here and must be stupid? I have a postgraduate degree and have worked as a civil servant and travelled globally. I can assure you this lecturer is incomprehensible. And as you struggle to figure out what he has meant by something you have then missed the next bit and cannot keep up constantly trying to interpret what was meant. But, you know best obviously.

Oh God, my A-level maths prospects were comprehensively demolished about 40 years ago by just such a ‘teacher’. She had a strong Egyptian accent, muttered sotto voce into the black/whiteboard while writing up endless proofs, and drew her inspiration from a literary precursor of Professor Binns.

I had, and still have, a hearing loss, and should have changed pronto to almost any other subject, apart from Chemistry. Nobody in that group got above a C apart from one girl who almost certainly had extra teaching/tutoring, and I myself was lucky to scrape by with an E.

I would hope that any potential employer would be able to support me with this rather than chucking me in at the deep end with 70 odd students staring blankly at me, not answering any of my questions and then spending time on their phones as they just cannot follow what I am saying.

Come now, you were obviously just not trying hard enough to understand her....

I think you're being ignorant. I'm a linguist and studied languages to university level, and I wouldn't get a job as a teacher in a country of my foreign language if I knew my accent made my speaking incomprehensible. It's irresponsible. I also think it's my responsibility to improve my accent to ensure I can effectively communicate. If your accent is so strong that foreigners can't understand, you do not speak it well enough to use it as a working language in a profession. Part of fluency is pronunciation and accent.

You misunderstand me. I’m saying that the person’s grammar and sentence structure are likely to be bad too, not just their accent. It’s fine to say a non-native speaker does not have good enough English , but focus on accent is misguided; it’s lazy shorthand.

I agree @Zoobi

You do realise that Scottish people are native English speakers, right?

😆 It was before everyone was so scared of being seen as racist; unfortunately she was almost unsackable for other reasons. My (with hindsight) dyscalculic friend had the misfortune of attempting her O-level retake with this teacher. She couldn’t make her out either.

Fairish enough as an opinion, but I would find poor grammar and sentence structure with a good accent easier to comprehend than perfect grammar and sentence structure with a very heavy accent. Not sure what is lazy about that?

It is lazy to say “accent” when you mean “incomprehensible English”. It immediately makes it about race/ethnicity/geographical origin.

Can you imagine the uproar on here if I were to post that I had secured a lecturer post abroad and had had complaints that my accent was not understandable but that I thought they just needed to adapt to my British accent....

I’d be very interested to actually hear examples (YouTube clips, sound files?)of what people consider ‘heavy accents’ speaking English.

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.

That's madness and the thin end of a very large wedge - where would it end? Lots of parents decide that a particular teacher is not a good teacher, doesn't have a good grasp of their subject, can't control the class or whatever - do you expect a letter to universities about that as well? What NobleGiraffe is speaking about is an easily quantifiable and provable loss e.g. no teacher for a class for 6 months. What if most of the class can't understand the teacher's accent but some don't have that problem - do only some people get the letter for university or a higher grade? What about students who are tutored all the way through a GCSE subject - should they be marked down because others couldn't afford that luxury?

Well, thank you for clarifying but in this case I absolutely do mean accent...

Obviously English is the national language of many countries. If I were to go and teach a subject in an English speaking country, let's say an island in the Caribbean, but the people of that country couldn't understand my particular English accent and dialect, I would have to work on making myself understandable. This isn't always about changing your accent, it could simply involve speaking slower and not using localised idioms etc.

In my experience it’s a huge problem. Yes, most children without additional difficulties will learn to tune into a different accent relatively easily, but many children cannot.
1 in 7 children have a language difficulty, a strong accent is always going to be a struggle for them. Children with any sort of hearing loss, and for infants as many as 4 in 5 have glue ear at some point, children with dyslexia, children with a processing difficulty. And EAL children, who are already learning in their second language.
It can disadvantage all of these children.

I had an Indian teacher at school, he was easy to understand after a term. He had a habit of slipping back to his native language for a few words, but we just ignored those parts. However we was all older so more confident to ask him to repeat. I had a French lady teaching me French who I struggled to get. She liked to shout a lot that she was more English than us as had moved to UK pre our births. She didn't seem to like England or kids so she was a issue. Wouldn't have dared asked her to repeat as she's go into a racist rant about how we was all disgusting unlike the French 😆.

In our experience she didn't understand the very English faux cockney primary Y6 teacher. He was not actually cockney and his mother who raised him in the affluent village the school was based in also worked at the school, sans accent. He kept trying to be "down with the kids" and talked about sport incessantly, only to the boys of course. He didn't seem to understand the curriculum either which didn't help.

I think, although I may be misinterpreting, that what is important is the diction or clarity of speech. It doesn't often involve an accent but speaking clearly is important. If someone with perfect RP mumbles I won't understand them either (I do have some hearing problems though). I think that clarity is much more important in a classroom than the accent, accents we can all get used to but clear speaking is imperative to learning.

My DD had a maths teacher in y9 with a strong accent. She actually fell behind and it took her ages and a different teacher to catch up again.

I'd say it's an issue especially in areas where there is a significant % of non native speakers.

Children are learning, so they have to negotiate the subject plus the specialist language... add a heavy accent and some will struggle to understand the basics.

My daughter has a hearing impediment and for various reasons chooses often to rely on lip reading rather than her hearing aids in certain classes, however there is one absolutely lovely science teacher who has the bushiest of beards. I mentioned in passing one parents evening (in a way I was concerned teenage vanity regarding the hearing aid was getting in the way of her learning) and the lovely man offered to shave! I did obviously decline but she was moved sets at the next opportunity!

😂😂