Teacher with heavy accent

[heavyaccent]

NC as controversial.........

DS has been moved up to top set maths for year 8 which is great. He claims to not be learning anything however, as he's having difficulty understanding the teacher because of her thick accent. She also apparently speaks quite quickly. When other students have asked her to repeat something she has exploded at them for not listening. He says she's very strict and not an approachable character.

I'm not sure how to advise he deals with this- he thinks asking her to speak slower or repeat details will get him in trouble. So do we just accept that he will sit there for the whole of year 8 not learning anything? He is now dreading this class every day. It was his favourite subject previously.

My only related experience is when learning to drive with the AA. I was allocated a Nigerian instructor. Very nice friendly man made me feel at ease but honestly I just nodded along with everything he said as I could barely understand a word. After 3 lessons like this I decided to switch instructor- I felt bad but I just wasn't learning anything and I couldn't afford to waste money on lessons.

So what is my AIBU- I'm not really sure. I would rather he drop back to set 2 and really understand the teacher and continue to learn. Is this a bit 'racist' of me though?

Oh man I feel for your son!
I’m an immigrant and English is the language I’m most comfortable with, but I struggle with some regional accents. At my very first job when I moved to London I had to work with an Irish lawyer and I really struggled to understand anything he said. Similar thing happens when I call our gas and electric provider since their reps are all Scottish. Not entirely sure if I’ve signed up to a new tariff or not! 🙈🙈
It’s hard because they’re British and just assume everyone understands them. Foreigners and immigrants I find tend to be more understanding of other people finding it difficult to understand them.
I’d raise it with the school after meeting the teacher OP. Your son can’t be the only one struggling!

I find accents really difficult sometimes.

A few years ago I had to call BT about a problem, so I was stressed already. The guy was Indian I think, and I was crying with frustration because I had absolutely no idea what he was saying to me.

The other day I was taking a taxi. Really nice bloke, possibly Middle Eastern. (We established straightaway that we both like cats as I said to be careful not to run one over that was crossing the road.) When we were getting near the place, he said, which interanez? I was like, pardon, three times, until I twigged he meant entrance. Dur. So awkward though!

Also, I’ve been watching some documentaries on the Troubles. I have the volume up loud to try and catch what they’re saying, but with the mumbled Northern Irish accents, I have not a fucking clue what they’re talking about. The main thing I’ve learned is that Martin McGuinness used to be in Simon and Garfunkel.

Some accents are hard to fathom and hardgoing if you’re not used to it. It will take me ages to tune into a strong Geordie accent.

I find Iranian accents in English quite hard going as it sounds way too slow for me.

Ds has a form tutor who’s Spanish. Understands his English but gets frustrated that he’s trying to teach them Spanish informally using total immersion and not speaking English. He’s learning nothing. I plan to have a chat to HOY suggesting Berlitz method is not working for the kids

Almost no one can understand my dm (of one part of the world, raised in another). Her very strong accent is unfathomable.

Light chat with HOY might be good. There may be other kids thinking the same. Compromise. Kids get to know teacher, teacher slows down and repeats where necessary.

I feel that the onus is on me to make myself understood, not them

That's very decent of you, AmICrazy. I also love America and spend a lot of time there, but all the same I made a complete fool of myself in West Virginia, where for me they might as well have been speaking Martian

If any "fault" was involved, though, it was mine ... when in Morgantown Rome and all that

I don’t think it’s racist to expect a teacher to be able to communicate clearly with their class and be understood. But we are extremely short of maths and science teachers, and I think the correlation is a key point.
DS had an excellent maths teacher who was a native Cantonese speaker, spoke very quickly and thought most of the students were lazy and rude because they could neither understand her or the work. I found her hard to follow, despite years of experience listening and understanding accented English.
It’s unfair to students. Teachers are communicators first and foremost.

I had a pupil in one of my classes who really seemed to struggle in every lesson - and I knew this child to be really diligent and a hard worker I asked her after one lesson if everything was alright and she got really upset and said she was really sorry but she really struggled to understand my Glaswegian accent. I felt awful! I was SO glad she told me though, I would have hated for her to have sat through my lessons feeling upset about it.

I had taught most of the children before, but she was new to my set and I realised that I needed to slow down and just be more mindful etc. I also told her to make sure she just let me know straight away if I was warbling on in a way she didn't understand and it was absolutely fine after that. It became a bit of a standing joke between me and the class.

Oh I sympathise. We had a terrifying teacher fresh from Belfast, who had such a strong accent we couldn’t understand her.
She would scream at us, accuse us of not paying attention, call us stupid, though actually we were a well behaved bunch of grammar school girls.
By the end of the year we had got used to her accent ( though not to her dreadful temper) but we wasted a lot of time.
I wouldn’t wait a year, especially as it’s Maths.

Personally I find some accents impossible, however long I hear them for, I can’t phone companies in case I don’t understand the person I talk to. It’s not racist, the worst is Scottish for me. If I can see their mouth I have more chance, but in a classroom or on the phone I have no chance.

@yabadabadontdoit. Do you genuinely have difficulty understanding Alex Salmond, Kirsty Young, John Hannah, Nicola Sturgeon etc? (I mean the words, by the way, not their politics ).
As a Scot myself I feel that many of my compatriots (but not those listed above) speak far too quickly and use colloquialisms when talking to non-Scots. That is why people don’t understand them, not the Scottish accent per se. If they are not communicating properly in call centres then they need more training, not a new accent.

op

I'm wondering if we have kids at the same school. the being unapproachable, strong accent and exploding at people who dont immediately answer while trying to figure out what she said sounds extremely familiar. We also have the issue if the fact she stands in the way so dd cant see fully what's been written on the board and apparently she gives very little time to write it down before shes moved on.

The accent you get used to the rest is the bigger issue.

What are the initials if the school op

My god some of these comments! The kid can't understand the teacher and people think they need to get used to it! At possibly an hour or two a week!
No wonder such an abysmal amount of kids achieve much if these are the standards they're expected to learn under!

Sand dancers are from South Shields whereas Geordie are from Newcastle.

If they are not communicating properly in call centres then they need more training

Trouble is, sales targets mean they'll only dedicate limited time to it. I had a candidate who once worked in a call centre and we got chatting about this, which is how I learned the "training" was just one hour spent telling them "say it like this, not like that"

The call centre was BT's by the way, and they don't seem to have got any better ...

I moved to Sunderland(NE) for university, for the first few weeks I could not understand the local accent and relied on a friend from Durham, I eventually got the ear for the accent but it was really awkward at first!

Still have problems with very thick scottish and irish accents but fine with welsh.

People tend to 'get' accents if they listen to understand, as opposed to having a rigid mindset that won't try because 'I can't understand'. Heavily accented English is still English but there are people who are so fearful of difference they can't and won't deal with that. All they see and hear is 'foreign and/or 'different'.

I struggle with accents. I have had two classes in my life where I simply could not understand the instructor. One was especially awful because I also had to work with him on a project outside of class. He at least knew that his accent was especially heavy and so would repeat things, but I still felt like I could only ask so many times a meeting. It left me constantly confused.

It’s unfortunate, but I do think accent should be considered when hiring for something like teaching. What matters most is the students being able to learn.

Nearly every foreign female teacher mentioned in this thread has been described as rude, bad tempered, shouty. I can guess exactly where this thread is heading.

I'm usually reasonably good with accents, but i have a Japanese colleague who has a strong accent and is very softly spoken and I really struggle to understand. His English is absolutely fine and can chat on our internal instant messaging system quite happily but face to face is a struggle.

Nearly every foreign female teacher mentioned in this thread has been described as rude, bad tempered, shouty. I can guess exactly where this thread is heading

Well if the teacher was patient approachable and understanding then there wouldnt be a problem would there. The kid would be able to talk to her .

You get used to accents. But you never stop feeling you cant approach someone if they yell at everyone

No wonder such an abysmal amount of kids achieve much if these are the standards they're expected to learn under!

Would you describe having a Scottish or Geordie teacher with a strong accent as poor standards?

There are a lot of sensible female teachers who know that some students find their accents difficult to understand. So they speak more slowly, enunciate clearly, face the student, rephrase what they said, back up what they say with written notes and diagrams, don’t get cross when asked to repeat something...
Whereas yelling and being aggressive either angers or frightens the children they are supposed to be teaching.

People from Newcastle are Geordies and people from South Shields are Geordies too. They have the same Geordie accent.
At some point in the early 1980's the term Sand dancer started to be used by some people to refer to people from South Shields.
It's origin is obscure but relatively recent. Some say it refers to the fact that South Shields has lovely sandy beaches and others that it is a reference to the Yemeni seaman who settled there in the 1930's . However, make no mistake about it, the inhabitants of South Shields are first and foremost Geordies.

I have a very strong regional accent and when people call me up at work they don't recognise me because I sound different. At work I have tried as best as possible to speak more clearly and slowly so no one gets flummoxed by my real accent. Its not hard to do.

I certainly wouldn't be letting my kid fail this lesson just because its politically incorrect to highlight the fact that they are incomprehensible. The teacher is there to teach . If they can't for whatever reason they shouldn't be there.

I train English as a Foreign Language teachers. If they can't communicate with their students to the extent that they cannot learn effectively, and lack the strategies to resolve communication issues (eg speaking slowly and using appropriate emphasis, paraphrase, comprehension checks and monitoring to ensure they have been understood, supporting oral input with visual etc), I will have no hesitation in telling them that their teaching is unsatisfactory. This stands for both native speakers and non-native speakers. I've observed plenty of excellent teachers with otherwise strong accents whose students can easily understand them because they make the effort to be understood, and are approachable and kind when asked for clarification.

‘People tend to 'get' accents if they listen to understand, as opposed to having a rigid mindset that won't try because 'I can't understand'. Heavily accented English is still English but there are people who are so fearful of difference they can't and won't deal with that. All they see and hear is 'foreign and/or 'different'.’

What rubbish. The teacher I mentioned was white British, quite young and pretty, and we didn’t know her from Adam.
She was new to the school with my year group so none of us knew her and we had no ‘rigid mindset’. We could understand a Finnish friend perfectly, and Bangladeshi friends almost always.
The problem was the teachers ACCENT.

When I first started infant school, my class teacher was Northern Irish. Teaching us the alphabet, we would repeat after her, "A is for Apple. B is for banana".
My dm would get me to say "banana" for others and be in hysterics. I'd learned to pronounce it in a NI accent!