Well, I've lost this post once already, and the new, whiz-bang "recover post" feature didn't help. But I will try again.
Did you check out the post I referenced earlier? I'm really not certain where to come down on this one. One the face of it, I think that any smallmindedness based on what a person sounds like is just that - smallmindedness.
People have accents and we need to learn to talk to eachother. Also, I would imagine that a high percentage of times when this turns out to be a problem its when someone that isn't a native speaker is talking to someone who is a native speaker. In those cases I think the non-native speaker ought to get some slack just for having gone the length to learn the new language, even if they can't speak it perfectly.
On the other hand, if I went to another country, I would feel guilty if I couldn't speak the language and would not expect native speakers there to have to understand me if I couldn't be properly communicative, so is it wrong to expect the same of them here? I think that the sad part is that most Americans traveling abroad would not have the same feelings as I think I would in a foreign setting. People just expect that everyone will understand their English. That is likely smallminded too.
I have to say that one of the more frustrating moments of my memory concerns this. When I was in high school and working retail I once had a customer ask me for something over and over again and I simply could not figure out what he was saying. He clearly understood me, so I surmise it was in fact English that he was speaking, but I was at a total loss. In the end though, my frustration was with myself for not being able to piece it together, so with him for having an odd speech pattern. Here again, I think that the woman proposing the legislation is clearly laying the fault at the feet of the non-native speaker not with her kid or herself.
As far as teaching goes specifically, I think I have had two teachers who would have had trouble under this scenario where students that don't understand can get you fired. One teacher I had in undergrad had a fairly thick accent. Among other things he would pronounce "a square" as "esquar." It took a little getting used to, but it certainly didn't keep me from learning the material. In the end it was kind of distinctive too. To this day I still sometimes tell my CAD class "ok, now please draw esquar" and they all look at me like I'm loony.
I had a teacher with a fairly thick Asian accent in grad school. He would say "bo val" when he was saying "ball valve" and "dimameter" when he was saying "diameter." Again, there was a learning curve, but it wasn't detrimental. Sometimes there was even a small sense of achievement. When we figured out that "ampriveyecar" was "amplifier card" we all felt fairly proud of ourselves. It took us the better part of two months to suss that out. In the end though, this was one of the best teachers I have ever had, and I certainly wouldn't have traded him in for someone else that spoke more familiarly.
Also, I have to say that perhaps I don't relate to this the way other people do. When I talk to someone with an accent like this, I often find myself dropping into their cadence and intonation. I don't know how they hear it or perceive it. I hope they don't think I'm mocking. Its really something that I don't control, although I can hear myself doing it. One day I heard myself say "dimameter" to that grad school instructor. From the looks on faces around me I'm sure the rest of the class heard me do it too. We all braced for some kind of retribution, but it never came. Truth be told I think that if that's how you speak, you may not even be able to hear the difference. I just wonder if it is easier to understand someone that speaks back to you the way you speak to them, or if "proper" English would be easier, or if it makes no difference at all. Maybe I should ask our voice & speech faculty.
Perhaps though there is a situation where this smallmindedness might be at least minimally forgivable. I recall hearing a story on PRI about how American school districts were having trouble filling teaching positions to such a degree that there are now companies recruiting primary school teachers overseas, from places like Manila. Here's the story:
I guess I can see where if I had a small child in primary school, at a time where they didn't have much sophistication in their perception and when they are still training their ear, that maybe I could see a need to have instructors speak closer to what would be considered standard English.
But maybe that's stupid. In those same formative years is when we are supposed to be the most able to learn language. Maybe this is the best time for kids to hear a wide variety of accents to prepare them for what they will face in the future.
More than the accent issue, I find it a little depressing that we simply can't find these teachers domestically. That would seem to me to be the thing to get upset about, rather than that the teacher we've brought halfway around the world doesn't sound like they are from across town. The accent issues would seem to be implicit in the solution we've elected to the bigger problem.
Also, one would hope that the administration of the schools doing this kind of recruiting would be monitoring the intelligibility of their candidates. When we admit foreign students here they have to pass a language test. I would hope that these employers are being at least that diligent with their teachers.
And regardless of if the person is comprehensible or not, certainly this isn't something that we should be placing in the hands of the kids in the class to vote on! The teachers have a boss, that boss can determine if they are speaking within an acceptable range of intelligibility. Why on Earth would we have kids vote on it? This sounds a little bit like a dispute between a parent and a school administration, not an understanding problem between a teacher and student. I wonder if that's what is really going on.
In the end, I think that a wide range of sounds can only be an improvement. As long as we all approach the issue with an open mind.
2 comments:
One of the best teachers I ever had was a woman who had escaped Nazi Germany...she'd been a research scientist who had to give it up when she had kids. When she went back to work, it was teaching biology.
And how! The hardest teacher in a school for the gifted; she expected college-level work from her students. And she got it.
And she never lost her accent. It was part of her charm, and meant that you had to pay close attention to what she was saying. She pronounced a certain hormone "ay-druh-NAWL-in" and I had to mouth it silently to realize she'd said "adrenaline", which gave me a little thrill of discovery.
But the best was when she explained genetic drift by talking about peasants swimming from one island to another to avoid lions...of course she meant "pheasants", but years later, my mother and I still joke about those cowardly peasants.
Lovingly, of course.
I had a drama lit professor who was from Russia and she used the word "chorges" a whole lot when we were talking about early drama history. when we figured out she meant "churches," we felt very S-M-R-T and not as confused, as we were all frantically trying to figure out what the hell a chorge was. She was the best professor I have ever had and I took about five classes with her.
On the other hand, I had a college algebra professor who had an impossible-to-understand accent and he was mean as well. needless to say, my experience with him was not as pleasant.
becca
Post a Comment