Arizona removing teachers with "heavily accented" English from some classrooms

[Peikko 1,575]

I haven't minimalized (sp) yer 'experience' - why are you jumping in this fashion?

Just making it clear that one's accent and pronunciation are irrelevant. If you want to speak without, or with a different accent go for elocution lessons.

[Darnell 8,478]

Ya, I see that. or Saw That, and mentioned it earlier, for dialogue coaches coming in from ASU theatre arts department.

I think it's come full circle, yes?

and fwiw - it's not ME with the problem - it's those teachers in Arizona, who are being shifted sideways.

[sachinky 465]

Accents are variable, I get that. That means I say, "p-uh-ssport" whereas an American will say "pass-port." Neither one is wrong or right. But very is NOT bhery. The problem here is not accents, but an inability to form certain sounds correctly. In Bengali, there is no "v" sound, thus, those who learn to speak in Bengali first, only learn the Bengali "bh" sound. When English is introduced in the fifth grade suddenly, it is damned near difficult for the students to pick up the new "v" sound, as in "van" -- they revert back to "bhan" -- the "natural" sound while speaking. It's the same case with "s" sound and "sh" sounds.

Like Darnell said, I'm only going off on my experience and really has nothing to do with the AZ law. I went to one of the best English medium schools in the city. We would go over the different sounds everyday, forming words slowly and correctly in nursery class. Now, in 10th grade when we had a substitute teacher who didn't speak English very well (both grammatical mistakes and pronunciation errors) but was a phenomenal Math teacher, it was fine, because the entire class understood what she was saying, even though the way she formed the words were different. However, if that same Math teacher had been in charge of teaching us English in nursery school -- when we were first LEARNING to speak English -- it would have been a very different story.

There is a difference between someone who speaks flawless English with a Bengali accent and someone who just speaks poor English. That's the distinction I was trying to make.

Edited May 1, 2010 by sachinky

[Peikko 1,575]

And my point is, you are not going to get many teachers who are native English speakers who are flawless let alone ones who can distinguish where from were on every occasion. If someone who is teaching English to kids doesn't have a firm grasp on English that's one thing, but if they are simply not perfect, not flawless, join the club. I am native British English from the South of England and attended some fine educational establishments and I can name maybe one teaching experience with a teacher who never made mistakes, and she taught French.

[sachinky 465]

And frankly, your U.K. example doesn't apply to what I'm talking about, in the first place. In the U.K. presumably, everyone speaks English, flawless or not, from birth. It's just the accents/dialects that differ from one region to another. I'm talking about India, where people in different states speak different languages (their mother tongue) and English is generally taught later in life as a second language. THIS teaching thus, becomes very crucial.

In India, speaking the English language properly is a status symbol and can open up many doors. I come from a well-off family so I had access to television, colorful books, cassette tapes, Americanized shows, and educated parents along with a fantastic education at a school that had the best teachers in the city. All these factors that could possibly help in correcting any word I was pronuncing incorrectly as a child or help me get a better grasp on the language.

The local primary school I was teaching at, had a large cross-section of students attending -- students from well-off families as well students who were the sons and daughters of maid-servants/chauffeurs. Despite the poor quality of regular teachers in the school, the students who came from the higher socio-economic strata spoke a more polished form of English whereas those from the poorer families did NOT. It is terribly unfortunate but it is fair to assume that those richer kids had the same sort of access to Hollywood movies and English-speaking parents whereas their counterparts had to solely depend on the teachers who were doing a piss-poor job of teaching them English. Now fast forward ten-fifteen years, who do you think is going to get the better job or get into a better college?

Edited May 1, 2010 by sachinky

[sachinky 465]

And my point is, you are not going to get many teachers who are native English speakers who are flawless let alone ones who can distinguish where from were on every occasion. If someone who is teaching English to kids doesn't have a firm grasp on English that's one thing, but if they are simply not perfect, not flawless, join the club. I am native British English from the South of England and attended some fine educational establishments and I can name maybe one teaching experience with a teacher who never made mistakes, and she taught French.

This is actually interesting and reminded me of a comment my college professor once wrote in my Politics paper. "Thank you for confirming my belief that international students write and speak English better than the American ones."

This is my theory and I've nothing to back it up -- because we are actually taught the language, as opposed to picking it up, non-native speakers are actually more well-versed in English, correct spelling and punctuation, proper pronunciation and the rules of grammar. Despite the thick, wonky accents.

It's the same with me and Bengali. While I speak it fluently, I'd have a hard time if someone asked me to explain the rules, proper sentence construction and such. I believe this is because Bengali is my mother tongue and it's something I picked up from birth and wasn't "taught" as such. I can tell you if something sounds "wrong" to my ear but I probably won't be able to accurately explain why or how it is so. Whereas for English, I could tell you that you got your tenses mixed up or that the allegory wasn't accurate.

Edited May 1, 2010 by sachinky

[Pinocchio Liberal 268]

GO ARIZONA! :dance: :dance: :thumbs:

[justashooter 430]

When you have a grasp with reality I might communicate with you seriously on such topics. Until then at your suggestion that the entire population of Eastern Europe wants to, and is moving to the UK.

more accurately stated, the entire population of certain parts of africa, the poorer middle eastern countries, and the poorer former british colonies in the regions surrounding india.

oh yeah, england dumped these cess pools after the second war because she realised that they were a drain on the crown, rather than a resource.

[Heracles 417]

more accurately stated, the entire population of certain parts of africa, the poorer middle eastern countries, and the poorer former british colonies in the regions surrounding india.

oh yeah, england dumped these cess pools after the second war because she realised that they were a drain on the crown, rather than a resource.

Funny they can't freely migrate to the UK.

[Heracles 417]

Oh please!

My professor for Data Structures and Algorithm speaks English with a very heavy accent. Yet, the class average as an 80. We went over dynamic programming, mapping theory, graphing theory, AVL trees, BST Trees, ADT, etc...

If anybody happen to step into MIT and meet many of these engineering professors, you'll see smart people are heavily accented people. (Don't look at me, never been to MIT except for conferences). But, even so, a heavily accented teacher is no different than a native speaker.

Agreed but they are not teaching English classes.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

more accurately stated, the entire population of certain parts of africa, the poorer middle eastern countries, and the poorer former british colonies in the regions surrounding india.

oh yeah, england dumped these cess pools after the second war because she realised that they were a drain on the crown, rather than a resource.

Actually, the reason England "dumped" those "cess pools" (lovely sentiments by the way, as always), is because the war was so economically ruinous to the British economy that the British could no longer afford to administrate the overseas territories.

More accurately state though, the vast majority of immigrants to the UK (80% or so) are here legally because EU rules (which the government can't do anything about) allow free movement of citizens to work anywhere in the EU zone. The other 20% are a mixture of illegals and those people from places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia etc who are here (also legally) under asylum status.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Agreed but they are not teaching English classes.

Dumbass, read the original post. This doesn't apply exclusively to English-classes. It applies to any class with students in it who are still learning English (i.e. ESL).

[Pinocchio Liberal 268]

Carol went to an ESL class here and all the teacher spoke was spanish.She left after the second day.