Hi Vu,

my opinion here is quite simple and pragmatic: learning English from a native speaker is of course the best option. But then there aren't enough (competent) native speakers who are willing to teach their pronunciation all over the world. So quite naturally talented non-natives will have to act as a role - I beg your pardon accent model. They should try to have an accent as close as posssible to the native one.

What do you think, Vu?

marylou

Dear Marylou!

I quite agree with you that there are not enough native English teachers everywhere to teach English as English has become an international language. We- the non-native speakers ,of course, try our best to demonstrate the language as perfectly as possible. For many L2 studentss it is the pronunciation that makes the students compare a native speaker with a non-speaker. Here I mean a native English teacher naturraly creates an English -speaking environment. However, your are right when you say that learning a foreign language in general and learning English in particular will become a success if you are taught by a willing and competent teacher.

Dear Vu,

I wouldn't go as far as overestimating the point of the native speaker of English as the absolute model in call cases. The argument is a bit of hair-splitting, I know, but there are lots of British speakers whose pronunciation is not RP or anything near it - take all these dialect speakers who cannot reproduce a pronuncation near RP at least. -

I have never thought of pinning down the question of whether or not being a competent speaker/teacher of English to pronunciation only.  There is so much more in creazing "an English-speaking environment" as you said in your post. It's all about knowing the right words in their right contexts and of course with the right grammar which contribute equally to speaking English correctly. And with respect to grammar, a trained non-native speaker/teacher  of English will often score much higher than a native one. This holds true for me at least, I speak German as a mother tongue but I only have a vague (i.e. implicit) knowledge of grammar which I can only rarely put forward in forms of rules.

Dear Marylou!

I found your point of view especially noticeble. The quality of a language teacher is her training in teaching the language. A language is composed of many explicit and implicit aspects such as pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and other skills. Your persuasive example shows the necessity of a language teacher regardless of whether he or she a native speaker or not.

Best regards,

Vuthixuandung

Hello, Vu

The topic you introduced is very important, and very contreversial too. Most people I asked said that the need for a native speaker is evident for anyone who would like to learn proper English pronunciation and have a good accent. But as MaryLu put it :"...there are lots of native speakers whose pronunciation is not RP or anything near it." So the question here should be: how good is the teacher himself? is he well trained? Is he aware of the language and its use?

Does it really matter if a teacher is a native or not? or whether his/her pronunciation is academic and standard?

I'd like to end my opinion by this quotation : " a language teacher should be a trained professional, not an amateur.." as the linguist Leonard Bloomfield said.

Regards,

Omar 

Hi Omar,

you are raising a lot of interesting and highly controversial questions.

"Does it really matter if a teacher is a native or not? or whether his/her pronunciation is academic and standard?"

Of course it does. The role and abilities of the teacher are eminent and will decide on the kind of language the student learns. If you have a well-spoken native speaker as a teacher your chances of learning English with an accent as close as possible to a native one are very much higher than with a non-native. Of course I'm talking about a native RP speaker. (I'm not talking about students who would in fact like to learn English with a regional accent like Cockney or Glaswegian or who would like to learn a substandard pronunciation).

if the teacher's pronuncation is not standard, your chances of learning a standard accent are low if not non-existing. Of course our notion of standard should be realistic. If you look at modern RP speakers like the pronunciations described in Well's Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, you will see that the current understanding of RP is much broader than it used to be with "King's English" or with the beginning of Gimson's EPD (English pronouncing dictionary). This broader notion of what is standard has led to a broader understanding and acceptance of accents for instance with a slightly regional touch. - The question really is how to define what we understand by "standard". The notion must not be too restrictive in order to include all those who speak a "good" English, and not too broad to exclude all those who speak a "bad" English. - The term standard itself is inherently vague, it is only when defining it, that linguists make clear what is accepted and what is not. And of course linguists cannot relie on their own intuition about language, but must have statistics on their side (like John Wells did with the Longman's Pronunciation Dictionary).

"I'd like to end my opinion by this quotation : " a language teacher should be a trained professional, not an amateur.." as the linguist Leonard Bloomfield said."

I'm a big Bloomfield fan, too. Great. But what exactly does he want to say here???? What is a trained professional - someone who is good at linguistics,, somehow who is good at teaching, ie. knows about the methodology and didactics of teaching or what? 

I don't know in which context (book) Bloomfield said that, so I cannot really say anything about this quote - apart from the facts that it leaves too many open questions.

So can you please enlighten me there?

Marylou

Dear all,

Your questions are so intersting that I  like to have some comments.I attempt to explore some of Omar's assumptions underlying the quotation " a language teacher should be a trained professional, not an amateur...". I understand that the first prerequisite of a  trained professional teacher in a foreign language (in my point of view) is the receiving  of a formal training course at a pedagogy university specialised in foreign languages to graduate to become a teacher. He or she needs at least the following criteria: adequate linguistic knowledge to present the language to his/ her  students,   ELT methodology and teacher education. I mean if a native speaker can speak the language well but without other language knowledge such as grammar , positive attitude towards the students and teaching techniques necessary for the lessons to become comprehensible, he or she is regarded as an amateur in language teaching.

What do you think Omar? Do I really catch your opinion?

Hello everyone!

I agree with Marylou when she said that learning pronunciation from a native speaker is the best option, but there are not enough native speakers to all foreign language learning classes around the world. What is a fact is that non-native teachers have to be prepared, trained in all those aspects that characterized a language: grammar, vocabulary and of course Pronunciation. Likewise, a person who wants to teach a language- not only a language but anything - should know how to teach, deal with students and anything that can occur in a classroom.

I'm a teacher; I should say a new teacher. I studied Modern Language in a university but not to teach. I learn English and practiced it in a deeply way, I know its linguistics aspects, grammar and pronunciation. Nevertheless, I did not learn about educational skills, it is now that I'm learning all that in my post studies. However, in my classes I put in practice what I learnt from my Modern Languages professors and it worked. So, I'm not a native speaker, I was not a trained teacher but my skills let me to teach a foreign language. Now I'm learning many important things about pedagogy and I feel great about that. It was what I needed to be better in teaching English.

When is about pronunciation, I give all of me to pronounce well, with a good intonation. I might not have a definite accent and it is something I have to fill it up with other techniques. What I want to say is, even you are not a native speaker, there will be always many techniques and ways to help your students, learn how to pronounce words and understand listening activities. I suggest to my students to listen to music, watch movies, series, sitcoms and every show on TV that be in English. I teach them phonetic symbols in order they can recognize sounds, so they can learn how to pronounce a word from a dictionary. I always try my students have a good, an academic pronunciation; I know they will improve it.

Is really there a Standard English pronunciation? I agree with you Vu, when you say that the meaning of Standard is something vague. How many variations does a language have? Should we let them out just because we think are not standard? What would happen if my students learn a special accent from a TV show? Would be that bad?

In brief, we should teach a good, academic pronunciation that let students to communicate and be understood, when talking with a native speaker occurs and among every group he/she is talking with. We, as teachers, need to be prepared, of course. We should learn the foreign language we are going to teach well, before teaching it. We can learn from everywhere and everyone, it's always up to us! We decide if what we are learning is good enough or bad. We choose every day what we want for us. So, we should learn to be good and then, keep learning to be better and at the end we can feel we are the best but I'm sure we can be excellent teachers, students and foreign language speakers!

It is a good way to improve, isn't it?

CU

Edith

Hi Edith,

Although you said that you were a new teacher, you got quite a lot of experience from your teaching practice. Your opinion is easy to follow. I think the matter we are discussing belongs to language teacher training. And the circumstances of EFL teaching now are far different from those of the time when English had small influence on international relationship. I mean because of  the use of English in business, study and other aspects, more and more people want to master it. The need leads to systematic teacher training courses to meet the demand. As a result, non-native teachers have opportunity to perfect their linguistic knowledge and teaching techniques as well. I believe that we, non-native teachers always want to improve our knowledge and skills in our job and our aim is to become teachers as excellent as possible.

Hi All,

I think how many nations and nationalities are and so many variations of

English prononciation we have. It is the fate of  languages of integration

and globalization.

I have never heard about  the standard pronunciation of the English language?

Has the English language such a thing?

The word "progress" is written in one dictionary as[pr ogres] and  in another

 [prougres]( I have no transription symbols in computer that is why I can't right 

specific sounds) .What pronunciation is right how to define?

 There are so many diphthongs, so many exclusions...

Hi everyone

This subject is so interesting. I am a Business English teacher and every week I try to impress upon my students how vital it is to have at least recognisable pronunciation. 100% in grammar and learning the dictionary from front to back will be of no value in a communcaition situation if your pronunciation is bad. Think of NATIVE English speakers who are diffiuclt to understand - some British accents are extremely difficult to access- native English speakers do not have the same accents. What is important is to move as close as you can to an approximation of the standard (which is very fluid anyway). I advise my students to speak slowly (fast does NOT equal fluent) and to spend as much time as they possibly can practising. Pronunciation is a skill that is  improved through practice, like any other skill. Being a great tennis player takes hours of practice a day, being a competent English speaker requires the same.

Candy

It is highly appreciated to have a semi native accent when you are envolved in teaching English as a second or a foreign language. But as long as we know, a language is a means of communication, the target of which is to convey messages and receive messages comprehensively. Therefore, nowadays we can hear a Chinese accent, an Indian accent or an Arabic accent, etc. We do understand all of them. Still we enjoy only the native accent exactly as we listen to an original song by its genuin singer.

Dear all,

I think a L2  teacher's pronunciation depends on at least two things: the variation of the foreign language he or she follows and the influence of his or her mother tongue on the target langauge.

 Hello Everyone:

     I just stumbled across this website while doing some research.  I think it is an interesting discussion. Regarding the acquisition of L2 pronunciation by adult learners, to the best of my knowledge, most researchers and commentators are of the opinion that adults are not able to acquire accurate pronunciation of an L2 (Refer to, for example, Lenneberg, E. H. (1967). Biological foundations of language. Malabar, FL: Robert E. Krieger; Lightbown, P. M., & Spada, N. (1999). How languages are learned. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press; and, Long, M. H. (2007). Problems in SLA. New York, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates).  Consequently, the goal of Communicative Language Teaching, for example, is intelligibility rather than native speaker accuracy.  As a result, there are many learning environments in which adult students, who wish to do so, do not have the opportunity to acquire a native speaker level of accuracy in L2 pronunciation.

     In response to this situation, I would like to provide you with the following information taken from a master's thesis (Jenkins, D. H. (2005). The acquisition of American English segmentals by adult native speakers of Mandarin. Masters Abstracts International, 44 (04), p. 1583. (UMI No. 1430462)).  The research reported in this master's thesis is the result of my own interest in resolving the difficulties I was experiencing in learning Mandarin.  The research established that it is possible for:

1.  a native speaker of American English to train an adult native speaker of Mandarin to pronounce the segmentals of American English as accurately as a native speaker of American English in 20 hours (1 hour a day, 5 days a week, for 4 weeks with no practice outside of class).

2.  a native speaker of American English to train an adult native speaker of Mandarin to teach the segmentals of American English as accurately as a native speaker of American English.

3.  a native speaker of Mandarin to train an adult native speaker of Mandarin to pronounce the segmentals of American English as accurately as a native speaker of American English in 20 hours (1 hour a day, 5 days a week, for 4 weeks with no practice outside of class).

4.  a native speaker of Mandarin to train an adult native speaker of Mandarin to teach the segmentals of American English as accurately as a native speaker of American English.

(Note: the age of the participants in the study ranged from 24 to 39.)

     So, a native speaker of a student's L1 is able to teach the student the pronunciation of an L2 if properly trained.  This is good news for instructors who speak a target language as an L2 and have to compete with native speakers of the L2 for a teaching position.

     In order to achieve this result, a particular approach (a philosophy (a metaphysic), theory, method, and techniques) was employed.  Space does not permit a description of the approach; however, you can refer to the master's thesis for the details (except for the philosophy, which was not permitted to be included in the thesis). In a nut shell, an instructor who wants to teach L2 pronunciation has to know, at a minimum, the pronunciation of both the L1 and L2, and then teach so as to relate the new information to the students existing knowledge ("perceptual categorization must both precede and accompany learning" (Edelman, G. M. (1987). Neural Darwinism: A theory of neuronal group selection. New York, NY: Basic Books, p. 7.);  "the Theory of Bias Shift (TBS) states that, as a result of learning that results in categorization, there occurs a shift in bias from category formation to category utilization as a consequence of a shift in bias affecting attention (with its accompanying psycholinguistic effects).  This shift in bias affecting attention results in an accompanying shift in bias from implicit learning to explicit learning.  This provides a theoretical foundation for the conjecture that an adult learner is able to acquire native level fluency in the pronunication of an L2 provided that the necessary information to do so is presented explicitly.  This implies that the method to accomplish such a task is one of instruction.  It should be realized, however, that explicit instruction is not an adequate condition for adult acquisition of the pronunciation of an L2, but only a necessary condition.  Any explicit instruction, to be sufficient, must (a) be presented in such a manner as to comply with the TNGS [Theory of Neuronal Group Selection] and its implications for neurolinguistics regarding the necessary conditions for learning to take place, and (b) must occur in such a manner as to allow for the psycholinguistic effects resulting from a shift in bias affecting attention [it must comply with the Theory of Bias Shift]" (Jenkins, D. H. (2005). The acquisition of American English segmentals by adult native speakers of Mandarin. Masters Abstracts International, 44 (04), p. 1583. (UMI No. 1430462), p. 55).

      By the way (a BIG by the way), this result was achieved under the conditions of 1 instructor with 1 student.  The approach is good for up to 3 students.  This limitation is due to the lack of time for feedback from the instructor in a 1 hour class.  Work is presently underway to adapt the approach for use with a class of 20 students.

      So, the good news is that you are able to achieve native speaker accuracy in the pronunciation of an L2, if you so desire.  The bad news is that you have to pay for a qualified, private instructor.  However, there is more good news - depending on what you want to do with an L2, you probably don't need L2 pronunciation that is as accurate as that of a native speaker.

 Dan Jenkins (Foreign Expert, English Department, China University of Mining and Technology, Beijing, China)

Hello Marylou:

     In a previous comment you asked for clarification regarding the remark attributed to Leonard Bloomfield to the effect that language teachers should be trained professionals and not amateurs.  I'll take a stab at it.

     Long before even my time, about the 14th century at least, there were only 3 learned professions in Europe: the clergy, doctors, and lawyers.  Now, the individuals pursuing these lines of work (sorry, "professions") enjoyed a high social status.  Not surprisingly, others began to refer to themselves as professionals.  Once engineers adopted the title "professional," it wasn't too long before garbage collectors pronounced themselves sanitary engineers; thus, achieving the status of "professional" in a single stroke of the pen (just joking!).  More to the point, there are a few published journal articles in which the authors address the issue of a lack of respect for those who teach their native language (sorry, I don't have the references with me).  One author went so far as to say that those who teach their native language would not be respected until they had their own PhD program (Sorry, I don't have the references with me).  These days, it seems as if most universities worthy of the name have a PhD program in Second Langauge Acquisition.  Additionally, it just so happens that the professors at one American university are not members of a teachers' union; they are members of what is called a Professional Assembly. My personal observation is that a person with a 4-year BA TESL degree from a program with a focus on pedagogy is better equiped to teach English as a Second Language than an individual with a BA in Computer Science, an MA in Second Language Studies, and a PhD in Second Language Acquisition.

     So, rather than use the term "professional," which is merely for the purpose of gaining social status among those who care about such things, let's think in terms of "qualified" and "unqualifited," or if you wish, "expert" and "not an expert."  An expert is simply someone with the relevant knowledge concerning the matter at hand. As an example, I will relate an experience that I had while taking a course in Chinese literature.  During the course, the instructor, who was an American and a native speaker of American English, said the Chinese word "dao" many times.  However, sometimes I thought I heard him say "dao" and sometimes I thought I heard him say "tao."  At this point in time, I say "thought," but at the time I was cetain beyond a doubt.  I would have bet you the rent money that he wasn't saying the word "dao" the same way everytime.  There were two reasons for my difficulty: 1) my lack of knowledge of Mandarin, and 2) certain psycholinguistic effects of which I was unaware.  The only distinction between Mandarin /t/ and /d/ is that Mandarin /t/ is aspirated and Mandarin /d/ is not.  Both are voiceless.  This is not the case in American English (AE) where AE /t/ is aspired and voiceless, and AE /d/ is not aspired and voiced.  So, although my ears heard the sounds correctly, my brain was finding it impossible to correctly categorize the Mandarin /d/. Sometimes my brain would choose AE /t/ because the Mandarin /d/ is not voiced, and sometimes my brain would choose AE /d/ because the Mandarin /d/ is not aspirated.  In effect, my brain, finding two likely candidates, but no exact match, was flipping a coin, so to speak, to categorize the Mandarin /d/.  Now, a qualified or expert pronunciation teacher knows what is happening as a result of having acquired an adequate knowledge of, inter alia, neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and the pronunciation of Mandarin and American English. A qualified pronunciation teacher knows what is happening; the unqualifed pronunciation "teacher" is clueless.  A qualified pronunciation teacher teaches and an unqualified pronunciation "teacher" demonstates the pronunciation of a word to a class of 30 students, who repeat the word as a group, and calls it teaching.  A qualified pronunciation teacher can train a student to pronounce all the vowel sounds in an L2 (American English, for example) to the level of accuracy of a native speaker in 4 hours, whereas the student of an unqualified pronunciation teacher never achieves that level of accuracy.  An unqualified pronunciation instructor is of the belief that s/he is able to teach pronunciation to students of any L1; a qualified pronunciation instructor has no such belief.

     My research and personal experience teaching pronunciation of American English to adult native speakers of Mandarin has lead me to conclude that if a student truly wants to learn the correct pronunciation of an L2, and is willing to follow instructions, then a failure to learn is the result of inadequate instruction.  The reason, inter alia, is that students can not be expected to be familiar with the relevant neurolinguistic and psycholinguistic considerations in learning the pronunciation of an L2.  That responsibility rests with the instructor.  Learning the pronunciation of an L2 is not similiar to learning history.  One can not learn correct pronunciation by collecting data in the classroom and then taking it home to study.  In pronunciation training, it is all on the instructor.

     Interestingly, most of the literature on second language acqisition discusses the problems students are having learning an L2.  Most students I have met are of the belief that their failure to learn correct pronunciation is a result of their own limitations.  I haven't observed anyone pointing a finger at pronunciation instructors.

     I hope this has been of some assistance to you.

 Dan Jenkins (Foreign Expert, English Department, China University of Mining and Technology, Beijing, China)