AIBU to feedback to school about teachers use of glottal stops

[TalomaPaith]

Children at Dcs school are split into different groups for phonics.

Parents are sometimes invited to watch lessons. I observed a lesson by a teacher using glottal stops I.e Let'er instead of letter.

Would IBU to mention this?

I didn't make 'a sarcastic remark about improper pronunciation', I corrected misconception about the whole of Scotland. HTH

OP all the kids living in areas where a glottal stop is sometimes substituted for a word medial /t/ need to learn that that sound in that position is written as a < t >. It doesn’t matter whether it’s their first language or a second language. If it’s a variation they are likely to hear sometimes or frequently (which it is because it’s part of their teacher’s speech) then they need to learn about it. If they watch American tv shows they will also figure out that the American flapped /t/ is another variant of the same phoneme.

"Lots of Scottish people pronounce letters properly, thanks all the same."

Where did I say it was the whole of Scotland? Large areas of Scotland use glottal stops. I didn't say it was the entire country. Can you list all the areas which do and don't? No. Of course that's ridiculous. It's you who is saying these parts of Scotland speak improperly, not me. That's the obvious snobbery I highlighted. And who were you thanking? Yourself? Your comment was snobby and sarcastic. Own it.

Where do we draw the line? Shall we teach Cockney rhyming slang, mle, Scottish and northern accents just in case our children hear it?

You draw the line at what they are likely to hear in everyday life where they currently live with the teacher they currently have.

If the teacher has a Scottish accent, then yes, they will be exposed to a Scottish accent.
would you complain if a Scottish person was teaching them?!

So as a qualified teacher you’ll completely understand that having parents watching you whilst you’re teaching is just awful. It’s not a show, not a performance. And you’re not there to critique someone’s accent.

@Dasherthereindeer we are in a very diverse area so that would mean Indian accents, Eastern European accents, multicultural London English. Seems like a lot of variations of phonics for young children to learn

@queenmeadhbh if they had a neural accent no. If they had a very thick accent yes

“Neutral” accent always, always means “closer to RP”. You really think that accent is correct, better, proper, and others are not. No amount of arguing and evidence on this thread has seemed to even give you pause for one second about your world view and tbh you’ve just cemented my feelings, which I sometimes think are maybe exaggerated, that many people with a certain type of English accent genuinely believe they are better than everyone else.

If you look at it from an individual child’s point of view, their first going to be exposed to their parents’ accent(s), then their teachers (including nursery level teachers) and classmates, then different accents in the wider community. Your point sounds like a very good argument for getting parents to read with their early primary aged kids to make sure they make the links between English as it is spoken by their family and written English as well as English as spoken by their teacher.

Have you heard of the concept of accent accommodation OP? People regulate their accent to make it easier to understand when they are communicating with people from a different speech community. So a teacher with a Glasgow accent teaching in the South East will sound less Glaswegian than if they were teaching in Glasgow and a teacher with an RP accent will alter it if they are teaching in Newcastle. It’s not even a conscious process. Everyone does it all the time.

You would complain if a person with a thick Scottish accent was teaching your children?!

I think we’ve got the measure of you OP.

Thanks for starting this thread and reminding me of the work we’ve still got to do on accent bias. I’ll forward this thread to the Sutton Trust researchers and show that even teachers aren’t immune to prejudice

Best of luck

'Are they Scottish?', your words. I questioned your rude generalisation. Own that.

There is no one 'thick Scottish accent' just as there's no one 'thick English accent'.

There is no one Scottish accent.

I asked if they were Scottish as I know that a glottal stop is a feature of my accent. It was a very straightforward question, no value judgement implied. You thought it was rude because you describe it as improper, perhaps you are the Hyacinth Bucket of Scots and couldn't bear someone to think you might speak "improperly".

I wasn't rude.

You are a snob.

You can keep saying something, but that doesn't make if true. Imagine being that derogatory and assuming. Sigh.

I think you might be misunderstanding @GehenSieweiter - everyone you are arguing with here is on your side.

The issue is not whether there is one Scottish accent, is whether the OP and others have an accent bias in favour of an RP accent

So you 'switched code' to affect not to know, because you though that would go down better? Odd.

😵‍💫

If people think it's unacceptable to complain about a teacher using a glottal stop, what would their opinion be if a teacher with a lisp or who pronounced the letter r with a "w" sound was teaching their child phonics?

@Buxusmortus I don’t know how I feel about that but mostly because I think you are comparing two different things.

One is a feature of regional accent, the others you’ve suggested are recognised speech impediments.

Unless you are suggesting that a glottal stop is a speech impediment?

I'm just looking at it from the point of view of someone who would not have liked my children to be taught phonics by someone that used a glottal stop in words such as letter, or had a speech impediment, because in my opinion they would be pronouncing words incorrectly.

If one is not supposed to complain about regional accents because it's classist, should one then not be permitted to complain about speech impediments because that could be construed as discriminatory?

Times are different now. I'm quite old and when I was at university and it was time for the milkround for graduate jobs someone in one of my classes, who had a very strong Liverpool accent, was told by the lecturer that he needed to radically modify his accent because otherwise he would be unlikely to get any kind of decent job. This wasn't at Oxford or Cambridge, it was at a northern university.

I'll be honest: I think in an ideal world, and where it's not specifically part of an accent and just imprecise speech (as indeed it is when I say 'le'er' myself, which I sometimes do), teachers would enunciate as clearly as possible. However, I think the OP's attitude is all wrong here, and that if a teacher is sounding out 'ball' or something, it doesn't really matter if he or she asks 'what le'er does it start with?'

I also think if she emails and the email betrays her own quite obvious lack of knowledge about language and grammar, she's going to look silly as well as unpleasant.