Hi Sabrine,

I am not at all convinced that the consistency of pronunciation in one learner is all that important.  The real key is intelligibility not pronunciation consistency.  Without question there is a great deal of research in sociolinguistics regarding intra-speaker variation and the way it reflects on issues like identity and audience design but that work is more focused on monolingual rather than bilingual individuals.  Further, within the bilingual situation, H. Giles work with accommodation theory and his work on miscommunication would suggest that other aspects of the L2 are more important than consistency of pronunciation (so long as there is intelligibility)....discourse variables, syntax and lexical choice are all more important.

Jack 

Hi Jack,

Thank you for your response!  I totally agree with you and that is actually what I read too. However, the argument put forward by the person who suggested to me that consistency of pronunciation is VERY important is that it should be pointed out and corrected in PARTICULAR contexts when EFL students are to become teachers or academics and that intelligibility is not enough in this case. To me, not being consistent in pronunciation really does not matter as long as the person can make herself/himself well understood, uses appropriate and correct vocabulary etc... Add to this, I did NOT  find any assessment tool that mentions consistency as a criterion even in international tests  for Academic Purposes.  

Would you agree to say that this could be an issue if we were,for instance, teaching a pronunciation course (not a speaking/conversation course)? 

Sabrine

Hi Sabrine,

I have tough speaking to EFL students for many years, and I think that each person has an accent while speaking another language. As far as I am concerned, as long as the student's pronunciation is clear and intelligible, we do not need to worry about their accent. If we consider the scoring criteria of the speaking section of some well-known international language proficiency tests such as IELTS and TOEFL, we see that as far as pronunciation is concerned, it is believed that it should be clear and understandable. And to me, the rationale behind that is the fact that at the end of the day, we want students to be able to communicate without any problem with others, and not to speak with a particular accent.

Hossein 

Hi Hossein, 

Thanks for your feedback. In fact, I couldn't agree more with what you just said. The issue discussed here is whether or not to emphasize consistency in accent when teaching English Major students who will become teachers later on. That, as teachers, they will have to display more compentence in speaking than other EFL learners. If we think of language acquisition, our learners are exposed to different varieties of English themselves and might unconsciously learn a mix of these. Infact, I think that some EFL teachers can sometimes be more demanding  than natives and in the end, it is denying the very identity of the learner. 

Good luck with your teaching :) 

Sabrine

Hi again,

If we are talking about EFL teachers/student teachers, I think as they are in most cases a model for the students, it is better that they be consistent in their pronunciation to prevent students' confusion.  Or at least, they inform students of the variations in the pronunciation. Also, in some EFL contexts, students may have this feeling that a teacher mixing accents is not a competent teacher which can negatively influence her instruction. 

All the best,

Hossein 

Hi,

I understand your point and I agree that teachers have to, at least, point out at this issue but talking about evaluating your students' speaking skills (in case you opt for a holistic approach to assessment), would you include consistency of pronunciation in the already too long list of criteria for assessing speaking, or would you just stick to intelligibility?

Thanks,

Sabrine

Hi

No, not as another standard.

Fluency, Accuracy, Pronunciation (being clear and intelligible),  vocabulary, and being organized  will be my focus if I want to assess their speaking.

Hossein 

Hi Hossein,

Agreed! Thanks a lot :)

Sabrine

I think your question can only be answered in specific contexts, not as a generalization for all ESL/EFL education. For example, I worked with ESL/EFL for refugees to Canada and I would expect both teachers and students to be assessed on accuracy of pronunciation by the standard of a Canadian accent. This is because proper pronunciation in this context adds to the value of the education: it helps the refugees adapt better to the demands of living in Canada. Another example, I know of a woman teaching ESL pronunciation for business people. In this case developing an upperclass Canadian accent is very important since it is the entire point of the course (studies having shown that people with clear native accents are more likely to have successful business negotiations). I would expect the same to apply in native English contexts around the world.

Teaching ESL/EFL overseas, however, is a different thing. If teachers/students are planning to teach/learn some kind of Global English in a non-native English context, pronunciation evaluation becomes somewhat arbitrary (although perhaps there would be an argument for selecting a standardized "Global English Accent"). Perhaps it would be best to include accents and dialect abilities as sub-skills in ESL/EFL, where a teacher would be evaluated on which dialects/accents (if any) they are able to instruct in/evaluate. A teacher-in-training could voluntarily undergo specialized training and/or assessment in order to be able to list specific dialects in their skillset (e.g. a teacher might graduate with "ESL Instructor Certification" with "American English Specialization" and "British English Specialization"). Similarly, a student could voluntarily choose an accent(s) or dialect(s) to specialize and be graded on. Thus, for example, if two students in the same ESL class learning in a non-native context (e.g. Thailand) were planning to apply their English skills in different parts of the world (e.g. Australia and Great Britain respectively), each could voluntarily take specialized dialect tracks and be instructed/graded accordingly.

I think the most important thing to note in such non-native contexts is that any decision by an ESL/EFL instructor to arbitrarily select a single accent/dialect to judge students by is unfair and unnecessary. ESL/EFL education should be designed to help the students achieve their desired level of communicability, and unless that includes skills in a particular dialect/accent it should not be included.

Hi Sabrine,

Good question! I'm of the opinion that pronunciation consistency should not be added as a criterion to the speaking assessment rubrics. Given that EFL/ESL students are trained to become teachers of English, they are still language learners themselves and the learning process may take their whole life. If we acknowledge this fact, it's probably easier to see that there are many changes happening during their learning process, pronunciation included I guess. While it would be ideal if they can keep their pronunciation consistent, I reckon getting the message across is more important. Cheers. 

Hi Sabrine,

Are we talking about pronunciation consistency for non-native speaker (NNS) students who intend to teach subjects through the medium of English or NNS students who intend to become teachers of English as a Second or Foreign Language?

In the first case, the only criterion for judging pronunciation should be intelligibility. It would be both grossly unfair and highly impracticable to insist on native-like accent consistency in this context: unfair, because it would create barriers for competent non-native speaker teachers; impracticable, because it would not be possible to find native speaker teachers with sufficient training and knowledge of the local education system to cover all the classes given through the medium of English.

In the case of future ESL/EFL teachers, pronunciation consistency should be taken into account to some extent as it enables teachers to act as models for their students' pronunciation.  However, it should not be given the same status as intelligibility and should never determine on its own whether a non-native teacher passes or fails a TEFL/TESOL course. I have known fantastic non-native teachers with very inconsistent pronunciation  (mixing British and American sounds) and/ or very strong foreign accents; they have got round the problem by exposing students to native speaker models via podcasts and published materials, and by being open with the students regarding the limitations or inconsistencies of their own English accents.

Hi,

To me, pronunciation is felt in to the small mark in assessing the students' speaking achievement. We cannot force the students to speak like the native speakers do because of the cultural effects. So, as long as their pronunciation is intelligible, for me, it will be ok.  

Hi Joshua, Ha, Chris and Dedi,

Thank you all for your fantastic feedback. I read your comments several times and this gave me the chance to reflect on how to put your ideas into practical use.

Well, I am going to highlight and respond to some of the comments you made.

@Joshua:

“I think your question can only be answered in specific contexts, not as a generalization for all ESL/EFL education.”

Yes definitely, the two first examples of you and the person teaching ESL pronunciation are good illustrations of situations where there needs to be some kind of consistency in accent. This is why I asked @Jack S Damico if he would agree that pronunciation consistency could be an issue while teaching a pronunciation course (be it in a native or a non-native context). Also, I should have mentioned that in my particular case, it is a non-native English context in which student-teachers take a conversation course (along with other content modules) for three years. The objective of the course is mainly increasing students’ oral comprehension and production for the purpose of communication but without losing sight of their future job (teaching).   

As to your suggestion for taking a specialized training in dialects and being evaluated in that, this is not workable in my context. You should know that the majority of students come with nearly no real practice of spoken English and that their pronunciation is heavily marked with a non-native accent. They also are NOT aware of what accent they are actually speaking (e.g., British or American). My question is:  How much time should a teacher devote to guessing and correcting consistency of pronunciation for each student from a class of 35? When I say guessing, I mean the teacher has to know if this particular student means to speak American English with some British English variation or the reverse. Don’t you think that this would be time consuming given the fact that there are thousands of other things to work on besides pronunciation like vocabulary, language functions, conversation strategies, turn-taking, language skills etc, etc…

“any decision by an ESL/EFL instructor to arbitrarily select a single accent/dialect to judge students by is unfair and unnecessary.” è this is not practiced by instructors. They do not judge students by a single accent; most of the time they judge intelligibility but in the question I ask, I am wondering if (when an instructor evaluates pronunciation as a whole; i.e, as being just ONE element from the speaking assessment grid, should s/he reward a candidate more for having a near native-speaker accent or for being consistent with ONE accent?  A good point was made by Chris when he said “I have known fantastic non-native teachers with very inconsistent pronunciation (mixing British and American sounds) and/ or very strong foreign accents.” I am a non-native speaker and teacher of English with almost no foreign accent at all but I sometimes have inconstancies mixing British and American accents. I do not pay attention to that certainly because I have been taught by the communicative approach principles that what matters is communication. I have picked different accents because I was taught by teachers who had different pronunciations which I unconsciously picked.

@Ha Pharma,

I agree with what you said. I personally share your opinion, but would like to comment on this part: “it would be ideal if they can keep their pronunciation consistent” A good way to, at least draw their attention to this issue could be introducing in the conversation course some sessions devoted to American Vs British English vocabulary, spelling pronunciation and even culture. Then with some games and activities students will practice and pay attention to the differences. Why not also asking students to prepare presentations where each group would be responsible for working on ONE difference. A special assessment grid could be designed to evaluate consistency, among other aspects. This assessment then would be formative and no mark should be attributed to students. What do you think?

@Dedi,

This is what I also think of when assessing my students but since they are future teachers, my idea is perhaps we should consider consistency while teaching and/ or assessing formatively but not as @Chris said to “determine on its own whether a non-native teacher passes or fails a TEFL/TESOL course.”

@Chris

“Are we talking about pronunciation consistency for non-native speaker (NNS) students who intend to teach subjects through the medium of English or NNS students who intend to become teachers of English as a Second or Foreign Language? “

Well, both! They are would be EFL teachers who will be teaching the English language  in Middle and Secondary schools but some of them can even teach at college/university level some content subjects like linguistics, research methodology, American literature and civilization etc…

Those who will be teaching in Middle and secondary schools will prepare their students to take national exams that are written only (there is no speaking part in their evaluation) and these students might specialize in different streams: say accountancy, business, medicine, sociology; most of which will be studied in literary Arabic or French. Other, mainly those who will carry on their studies and get a MA or PhD will be teaching future teachers (of Middle/high school or University levels) or students who will graduate with an English Major but will work in another field than education.

“In the case of future ESL/EFL teachers, pronunciation consistency should be taken into account to some extent as it enables teachers to act as models for their students' pronunciation.  However, it should not be given the same status as intelligibility.” I completely agree with this!

“They have got round the problem by exposing students to native speaker models via podcasts and published materials, and by being open with the students regarding the limitations or inconsistencies of their own English accents.” Great tips! And I agree that as EFL teachers, we have to be open regarding students inconsistencies of accents.

Thank you ALL again for your  input!  

Howdy, all,

    I concur with much of what has been said already, but thought I'd add a few comments.

   I have taught in situations where some teachers were American, some British, and even one from Malta. In this increasingly interconnected world, students have an opportunity for exposure to many different varieties of English (or Spanish, French, etc.) It used to be that the BBC (and in the US, NBC) had very strict standards for pronunciation, and announcers were selected on the basis of their speech. Now the BBC allows regular announcers and program hosts to speak all sorts of varieties from within Britain itself, so there is no longer a uniform "British English", nor is there a uniform "American English", for that matter. And missing from this discussion has been the increasingly prominent varieties spoken in Australia (which for Asia, is perhaps even the dominant model). Never before in history have students been bombarded with such remarkable variation in a language they are studying. 

   Given this, and the eventual potential geographic mobility of present-day students, the key for students for whom English will be a content-area vehicle, is simple intelligibility, even heavily accented by the native language. For students majoring in English and especially for those aiming at becoming teachers, oral fluency is obviously more important, and a higher standard of intelligibility is appropriate. 

   As seen historically and in the present day, countries formerly dominated by colonial powers have developed their own national or regional standard varieties, e.g. in Nigeria, India, the Philippines, etc. So even beyond the source countries of Britain, the U.S., and Australia, there are national or regional norms which should be considered as appropriate targets for teachers-in-training. 

   Thus given the plethora of varieties that one might hear in an hour on BBC or Chinese CGTN, it would seem of minor importance to emphasize any kind of individual consistency in pronunciation. I would suggest that the most important thing would be to expose prospective teachers to as much spoken language (via radio, recordings, TV, YouTube, or whatever, to broaden comprehension fluency as much as possible. There is enough regional variation within the US that I even occasionally misunderstand a speaker from another area. 

   More important than a single choice in pronunciation is

  (1) an awareness of major national/regional differences in pronunciation, particularly of high-frequency items (e.g., Irish English retains the older pronunciation of tea still found in great, Scottish retention of the vowel of park in university, the ongoing loss of the distinction between /wh/ and /w/ in the US).

  (2) different national standards in pronunciation when these reflect differences in spelling or grammar (as spelt vs spelled, aluminium vs aluminum)

  (3) especially differences in vocabulary, such as spanner vs wrench, advert vs ad, lift vs elevator, etc. This latter knowledge in particular can greatly help students develop what I would call polylectal receptive competence, and become sensitive to adjusting their own production in communicating with interlocutors from different backgrounds (including where, for example, it has been possible to establish Skype connections with individuals or classes elsewhere on a "buddy" arrangement).  

  All best,

  Rudy Troike

Hi Sabrine,

 very interesting question which has produced lots of interesting comments and reflections. I would just like to add one or two thoughts:

1) I think the issue of inter-rater reliability could be very significant here: do we really believe we can expect different examiners on different days to evaluate consistency in accents in a conststent manner? It's a highly subjective judgement in my view and so I would doubt that our oral examiners would have the deep and broad knowledge about accents to be able to evaluate perfomances adequately. The criteria most speaking exams use now do allow a little more objectivity (e.g. intelligibility is a bit less subjective

2) I am sure you already know about the ELF movement (English as a Lingua Franca) and Jennifer Jenkins' contribution to this very debate. Her position is very clear and people might not agree with it entirely but she presents a pretty strong case for a different approach to the learning (and so assessing) of English

3) having said this, I am also acutely aware that accent can matter. numerous studies (see Garrett 2010) underline how influenced we are by accent and all of us are under 'social examination' when we speak, so your question is important.

My humble opinion is that we should teach accent and about accents because they are formatively important but we should be shy of making strong assessments or evaluations based on our (imperfect) knowledge of them.

Hope this helps,

Richard

A native speaker accent will almost always overpower attempts to teach British or american accents. 

To me, the big question is NOT "do you speak like a native speaker?" but rather "do you speak in a way that people will understand you?"

Being self-consistent in your own pronunciation is good. In the big picture speaking words as commonly pronounced is good, such as long or short vowels.  But.......

I am a native English speaker and when I was in Scotland in 2016, I had trouble understanding some of the Scottish accepts I encountered.  So even native-speaker-to-native-speaker understanding can be difficult in some contexts.

"consitency in pronunciation"..

What is that?  I have never heard it cited as a factor in language proficiency. 

@Sabrine, in 2014 a conference had been conducted in Medan City, Indonesia. The topic of the conference is the challenge in learning English for Southeast Asia countries. One of the issues arise in that conference was English pronunciation and all the ASEAN experts in that conference agreed that American or British accent should not be the main objective of teaching speaking skill but we have to control their pronunciation is understandable for others (intelligible). Here, I agree with @Michael ""do you speak in a way that people will understand you?".  

Dear Sabrine, 

I am just wondering is there such a thing called consistency in pronunciation? 

However, if that means choosing a local pronunciation or the native one would work better is, of course, an issue of discussion.  We have to admit that there are different Englishes in the world and if someone wants to choose a native accent/pronunciation, which one would he/she choose? British, Scottish, Posh, American, Londoner accent Australian or what? 

Therefore, I guess we can choose anything, native or non-native as long as we are understandable to the listener. It is also TRULY essential to reduce the effect of the mother language on the English we speak so it is understandable to the international community. My two cents only. 

Regards, 

Karwan 

Rudy Troike claimed: 

" Irish English retains the older pronunciation of tea still found in great."

No it doesn't.

My short answer: As far as production (talking goes), prosody is more important than pronunciation, within reason of course. In English, prosody imparts subtle meaning, and even with excellent pronuciation of individual words, if the prosody is wrong, it is more difficult to understand than more accented speech with correct prosody.

Dear Sabrine M'zad, according to the criteria used for the TOEFL (IbT or printed versions), there isn't any indicator to make the distinction between British, American, Australian, or Canadian (among several others) English. It is implicit that clarity is a must. However, it is a fact that the prestige of those two accents play an interesting role depending on the context, that may be geographical (International Academic Congresses). Since language is an imitative skill, there wouldn't be very much problem when selecting the input (British, American, Canadian, Australian...), not just for pronunciation, but also cultural perspectives. I hope this opinion be useful. I have been a teacher for  more than 20 years and my native language is Spanish. I wish you luck in your research goals.

Hi Sabrina,

Thanks for getting back to me. I agree with you that it would be helpful if some sessions in your course are devoted to helping learners to distinguish different majors accents and it's absolutely up to them to decide what accent they want to shape theirs towards. However, I'm afraid I do not agree with the idea of evaluating consistency, even that's formative and it's just one element among others, because of a couple of reasons: (a) how do you evaluate consistency? and (b) who will be doing the evaluation, teachers/students? In both cases I'm concerned about whether they have enough knowledge of the accent to do the evaluation? Even native speakers, like some said earlier, at some stage find it challenging to understand other accents let alone evaluate them. In my personal experience, after living in an English-speaking country for some time, I realise that, when it comes to speaking, EFL/ESL students should work more on fluency and intelligibility than anything else. 

All the best,//-Ha Pham

I would consider "word-stress pattern" to be the most important criterion when evaluating ESL/EFL learners. Consistency in pronunciation is really hard to evaluate, because learners from all over the world are influenced by their environments (teachers, peers, parents, mother tongue, perhaps a second language, the music they listen to, whether they study british english or american english) 

Someone could easily combine an american pronunciation with a british one in the same sentence without realizing it and the whole thing could be combined with their mother tongue acccent. So it depends on your definition of "consistency" and what you are refering to when you say "pronunciation"! I would focus more on word stress pattern which is actually a more specific element inside the pronunciation. Someone can have a terrible accent, if the stress in the words is correct, then it is intelligible. 

Reading your question again it seems to specify consistency in using a particular accent, rather than consistency in producing sounds. The latter surely means that the speaker has control over individual sounds and will be consistent in producing those sounds ( according to a fairly broad acceptability range...internationally acceptable by speakers of English of some sort as their primary language). Consistency in this sense is assessed by some international speaking exams - candidates are always/generally/sometimes/rarely consistent in their production of sounds. Sounds are always/generally/sometimes/rarely produced appropriately. Consistency in this sense is not at all dissimilar to control - which we would all agree is an aspect of competency.

When it comes to consistently producing an accent I agree with all those who say it is of very dubious value when assessing competency in English. Accents are beautifully varied across regions, even within regions, individuals can produce sounds that are absolutely correct in terms of being native-like but are not usual for the speaker and who are we as teachers to insist on the mimicry of one particular accent?!  Globalisation means that accents and ways of pronouncing are very fluid. The flipside of this is the horror of the hyper-correct. I don't know if this occurs in American or Australian English but in British English it's something akin to listening to the Queen, tipsy, pretending to be her grandmother. 

This depends mainly on how you DEFINE CONSISTENCY: e.g. is it related to competence or oral production? Does it include SUB-COMPONENTS or DIMENSIONS? Is it related to SPECIFIC (particular) language skills more than others? Are there any agreed-upon global standards/criteria identified by authorities in the field of (foreign) language education? I think that answering these questions might be a good beginning for you! God luck :-)