to not want school to teach my kids how to speak in the way the teachers wants?

[bellabreeze]

Having irish accents the teacher of some of my kids has told me they would do little speech classes so they speak different.. its not the accent but its things like saying 'ting' not 'thing' and dat not that and stuff like that really.. I think.. I don't think it is important enough to waste time doing? But maybe I am wrong?

If they are travellers, they have much bigger issues to worry about than whether they drop their H's, and have far more barriers to future employment as well.

You don't think people who have an Irish accent but have always lived in England have it by accident, do you? It's part of their identity and culture, and as a recognised ethnic group, attempts by teachers with clearly little understanding to interfere with their natural language is completely wrong. And a discrimination issue.

EFL terminology has a relatively narrow application, Bonsoir, and isn't necessarily the appropriate usage when we're talking about native speaker issues. From the wider linguistics perspective, Standard English refers only to grammar, syntax and vocabulary.

fwiw, Scottish accents are often thought to be easier for EFL learners to understand, because the rhotic accent is more closely linked to orthography.

crackcrackcrakWed 03-Oct-12 09:38:35 This is my opinion but I'd be pleased if dd was offered this kind of thing at school. There is a regional dialect where we live which I don't want her to pick up.

and how pleased would you be if your DD was offered special lessons to make her pick up the regional dialect? Because as far as the locals are concerned it is your DD who has the funny accent.

Cailin I'm a native English speaker, though I grew up in a non English speaking country, and have lived in the UK since 1999 (and get stick for my accent, spelling and Americanisms all the time - especially on MN ) If anyone I talked to had a problem understanding me, which so far has never happened, I think it would definitely be my responsibility to change it rather than their responsibility to understand my native accent. I already consciously use British English words and grammatical constructions when I think I might not be understood (boot instead of lift, flat instead of apartment, at the weekend, got instead of gotten).

I've never had a problem understanding soft Irish accents (eg. father ted, dara o'briain etc). But to get away from the traveller thing, take South London accents - we had an apprentice working here for a while who said fing for thing, dat for that, iz for its, like pronounced as la' with a glottal stop. It was hard to understand his native accent and he wasn't kept on at the end of his apprenticeship

I don't know, I'll bow out of this now - I knew it was a bad idea to weigh into anything to do with accents, Shaw's quip from Pygmalion is clearly still alive and well! I don't think the teacher in the OP was in the wrong though and going by the experiences I've had since I moved here it will be greatly to the OP's children's benefit to learn how to "speak in the way the teacher wants" in some situations.

AngusOgg you are doing no-one any favours

I came on here to express my opinion about a matter that ought not to be occuring in any school anyhere in the UK. You might not like it - or its directness. Tough. Nobody died and made you queen of it all. I am not the only one to call this racist, colonialist attitude from the teacher exactly what it is. You may not like that, too bad. Live with it.

I don't agree that dis, dat, dese and dose is acceptable in Ireland. Many Irish people do not pronouce th properly, but the d sound is considered incorrect.

Mispronounciation is commonplace, but it still considered technically incorrect.

OP I think your children are lucky to be offered elocution lessons, the ability to speak clearly and properly will benefit them in the long run, and they can do so with an Irish accent.

Molly it depends on what part of the country you're in. As you know if you're Irish, pronunciation of a lot of words varies hugely across the country, and there's no "right" or "wrong" for a lot of different sounds. Because one group says it a particular way doesn't mean that's automatically correct.

habbibu - there is no difference in terminology or anything else between English for EMT and English for EFL. And as for teaching Scottish English - I can assure you that no-one cares whether an accent is easier than another. What they care about is learning English in order to be understood and recognised in an international professional context.

I'm from Dublin, Cailin, and I'd agree with Mollydoggerson, dis and dat in Dublin is a definite impediment to any career.

Besides, elocution just takes the ragged edges off, you know? It's impossible to actually eradicate the accent completely, (try as you might!)

The terminology isn't different Bonsoir, but the context is. There needs to be consistency in how English is taught in an EFL context- so for that reason there is a standard pronunciation of words. However when it comes to native speakers who don't actually need to be taught a language the issue of standard pronunciation is more about snobbery and rigidity.

"considered technically incorrect"? By whom? There is no Academy of English, you know. Atypical, yes, but "considered incorrect" implies there is a standard of pronunciation, and a "proper" way of speaking. I can only assume that for many people this means RP, but "native" RP speakers only make up about 3-5% of the population (at least that's what the situation was in 2001), so "proper" cuts out over 90% of the UK population. I agree that it helps to have a non-regional variant for EFL/ESL speakers to learn, as it simplifies things, but describing that as "correct" for native speakers doesn't make sense.

There are two further issues - there's the one of communicative clarity, so one might reasonably argue that children should be taught standard English, though they may speak a dialect at home, and their accent should be understandable to most native speakers, say.

Changing accent to address issues of cultural snobbery is really quite different, and raises all sorts of other issues about whether children should be forced to conform to the norms of a relatively small proportion of the population to fit in with preconceived prejudices.

The terminology for students and researchers in linguistics doesn't include accent as part of standard English, Bonsoir.

And RP changes from generation to generation in itself - it's not a fixed thing.

This isn't a thread on linguistics. It's a thread about teaching in schools.

I think people are more conscious and snobby about accents in Dublin Flogging. The dis and dat thing isn't even an issue in the midlands because absolutely no one says anything other than dis and dat. It's just how people talk, no big deal.

What's your point Bonsoir?

Read the thread if you want to understand the conversation.

I could only read the first few posts as it was making me so cross. Makes me wonder how the fuck anyone in Ireland learns to read and write with that damned different accent of theirs . They obviously need a troop of teachers all speaking the queens English to get their arses over and sort it immediately before all these illiterate Irish kids grow up and leave school. Oh no, wait...

I have read the thread, but your last post seems to imply some of the posts aren't relevant, and I'm not sure what you're referring to.

No, but the point remains that there is no standard pronunciation of English, in schools or otherwise. If there were then Scottish children would be taught to say faam, caa, faather, and children in the north would have to say caastle, paath, baath, etc.

It is a bit different from the OP's example, which is more atypical in the UK, and more a subject of prejudice, but people talking about standard or proper production isn't terribly helpful in this contect.

context, bah.

yiz could all come over and beat our accents out of us, the way your ancestors beat the language out of us, if that suits?

A question for all those who think the teacher is in the right: Would you think it acceptable for a teacher to give an Chinese child elocution lessons to make them sound more English? Or an Indian, South African, Brazilian child?
If not, what exactly is the difference?

People teaching in schools, to first-language English children, tend not to be using EFL teaching strategies, however good those are for teaching, um, English as a foreign language.

It's not terribly surprising, that.

Thing is, there is also prejudice, and it's no good pretending there isn't. I grew up in Liverpool, but never had a very strong scouse accent, and that did probably help me in the career I wanted; whether that's right is a different matter, and I guess we balance trying to confront and not pander to prejudice with the needs and opportunities of the individual child at a particular time. That's a tough one, and I don't have a real answer.

It's no longer "ok" to judge people on sex, skin colour etc (not that it doesn't happen) but is it still "ok" to judge on accent, even if the speaker is perfectly understandable and articulate?

MrSunshine absolutely, no question!! Having gone through from reception to Y11 in a school that was 99% Chinese speakers, in China, there was daily correction of everyone's English pronunciation as part of English language lessons. I remember getting thunked on the head by a teacher with a dictionary for going up? at the end? of my sentences?