Teacher with a very strong accent

[RunningStrong]

This is not my story, it's causing a lot of upset for a friend.

Teacher has a very strong accent that the students (apparently) find hard to understand. It's a Nigerian accent and the person who has raised it as a concern has been accused of racism.

Now, I remember having a Welsh science teacher and I did struggle to understand him for the first few weeks, but got used to it. This is apparently "worse" than that though.

Is there any offical requirement for teachers (in England) to have clear spoken English or is a regional or foreign accent just one of those things that students need to work around/learn to understand?

I sympathise with both sides TBH.

Not sure how I managed to put this in further education, it's a secondary school.

I agree with you that people do get used to accents and what once seemed incomprehensible becomes understandable. When I met my university friend I couldn't understand a single word she said, so strong was her Birmingham accent.

I work with people from many nationalities. Sometimes at first it takes time to understand, but after a while I learn to tune in automatically.

So, I think your friend could raise this in a more constructive way. So the issue is a teacher with a strong foreign accent = students having difficulty following the lecture. Your friend could ask if the lecturer could make the slides available in advance of the class, or if they can record the class with a dictaphone so they can play it back later when reviewing the slides/their notes. The university are likely to be defensive over the suggestion that a lecturer is unsuitable to teach because they have a foreign accent.

Incidentally there was a study done about perceived foreign accents, student’s perceived understanding and lecturers’ appearance in the USA a few years ago. I’ll see if I can find the abstract.

This is the reference. You probably can’t read the article without paying or having access through a university library so I’ll summarize. They did a study where the same audio recoding of a lecture by an American English speaker was played to students. Either a photo of a white lecturer or a east asian (Chinese IIRC) lecturer was projected at the same time. So the one group of students thought the lecturer on the recording was white and one group thought she was asian. The group who thought the lecturer was asian reported difficulties understanding her ´foreign accent’. It was the same recording for both groups…

Rubin, D.L. Nonlanguage factors affecting undergraduates' judgments of nonnative English-speaking teaching assistants. Res High Educ 33, 511–531 (1992). doi.org/10.1007/BF00973770

i would say there's no requirement to have a clearly spoken english. i've had foreign lecturers previously, spanish and greek and it can be really difficult to understand their accents but i don't believe any accent is completely incomprehensible if you really listen hard. the friend should try to record the lectures so she can listen back if she's missed something, sit closer to the front of the class so she can hear better and ask other students if she needs help interpreting something. i sympathise in some ways because i know how difficult it can be but it really is one of those things that you have to put up and shut up with because a teacher can't change their accent.

I also had a welsh teacher with a very strong accent.

We did get use to it and learn to tune in better.

Suggestion above about how to be constructive about what will help is a good one

Honestly I think its hard not to think there's racism there. I had friends who were uni lecturers after the Brexit vote and apparently there was a huge upswing in students basically giving feedback that they didn't want 'foreign' lecturers the first year after the vote, it was recorded at departmental level and they were really concerned about it. One of my friends had specific feedback in his class about his accent. He's an Israeli with absolutely perfect English, did all his postgraduate study in the UK, has a PhD from a prestigious UK university entirely undertaken through English. He's one of the 'experts' who chose to leave the UK following Brexit which is a huge loss for everyone in his field, and those attitudes and feedback forms were a big part of it.

I don't think the Nigerian English accent is objectively harder to understand than a Birmingham accent or a Glasgow accent, and I'm curious whether the students would have raised it in the same way if it was one of those examples. (Assuming they are not in Birmingham/Glasgow!) I've worked internationally with lots of people with English as their second language and honestly, it can take a while to get your ear to adjust but if I can understand people with quite poor English clearly then I think its a bit disingenuous for students to not be able to understand someone who I assume must be fluent in English to have suitable teaching qualifications to teach. Who did they complain to, and how? Did they ask the teacher if he could speak more slowly, did they ask him to clarify any phrases?

This is something that should be resolvable so for it to have escalated like this suggests a problem with how its been raised.

I have been on the other side of this, but as someone who raised a concern about a student teacher with a very, very thick accent. I was also accused of racism, not in a official, but a sneery capacity by their university.

No one could understand this student and they were in my reception class attempting to teach phonics. They couldn’t annunciate the sounds properly and the children could not communicate with them. The university actually showed up to observe and saw my concerns in action. They then advised me to give them feedback about ‘pronouncing things clearly’ and ‘projecting her voice in the classroom’ but obviously it was useless. That was how the poor woman spoke. It was a shit situation all round. I felt so bad for her- but unfortunately she was on the early years route so teaching phonics was key to her training and future role.

I would expect secondary school children to eventually tune in to someone’s thick accent, but in lower primary- it is a big ask on little ears.

I do think that all student teachers on early years pathways need to be explicitly taught the sound system of the kind of English that the children they will be teaching speak plus a standardised variety. (So maybe RP or Standard Scottish English depending on location) Otherwise phonics is going to be disastrous. But that’s a different situation to university or secondary level teaching an unrelated subject.

@Babyiskickingmyribs

So, I think your friend could raise this in a more constructive way. So the issue is a teacher with a strong foreign accent = students having difficulty following the lecture. Your friend could ask if the lecturer could make the slides available in advance of the class, or if they can record the class with a dictaphone so they can play it back later when reviewing the slides/their notes. The university are likely to be defensive over the suggestion that a lecturer is unsuitable to teach because they have a foreign accent.

Incidentally there was a study done about perceived foreign accents, student’s perceived understanding and lecturers’ appearance in the USA a few years ago. I’ll see if I can find the abstract.

Where are you getting all the "lecture" and "university" info from? from what OP has said, it's either a school or college.

I wrote my post before the OP clarified that. This is the further education topic.