TEACHING ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION 1

What’s Behind Teaching Standard English Pronunciation?

Clara Lira Castro

Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

LET1325 - English Phonetics and Phonology I

Professor Mauricio Arcaya

June 28, 2020

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Introduction

Teaching a standard pronunciation to someone who is learning English as a second

language has its benefits and its disadvantages. On the one hand, teaching a standard

pronunciation deals with the ethical question of indoctrination, in which children are socialized

into the ideologies of their culture. On the other hand, not teaching a standard variety diminishes

the options of the students, risking college applications, job interviews, and social acceptance.

The following essay will deal with this dichotomy and the fact that pronunciation should be

taught responding to individual goals according to each learner and their own ESL objectives

instead of focusing on the teacher’s goal of education. If children and students can choose the

ways in which they want to learn English, the problem of indoctrination and ideology oppression

is tackled.

Bibliographic Discussion

Teaching a standard pronunciation is a pedagogical approach that nowadays is being

criticized and commented upon. As Matsuda points out, “an inner-circle-based curriculum fails

to open the topics of the history and politics of the English language around the world” (2003,

p.722), it does not emphasize the fact that English is today an International Language, and that

most people in the world speak English as a second language, for the author, “a curriculum that

teaches EIL, in contrast, must address the colonial past (and, possibly, the postcolonial present)

of the language and the power inequality associated with its history” (p.722), in other words,

teaching English as an International Language underlines the fact that English is a global

language because of imperialism, colonialism and the pursuit of power. As Walker proposed, “to

use Standard English is to engage in a discourse practice that represents the "worldview of

mainstream and powerful institutions of our society” (1999, p.341).

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It is important to point out that teaching English as an International Language (EIL) may

be approached differently provided that the goal be effective communication between non-native

speakers or effective communication between a standard and a non-standard speaker. The

pedagogical approach to English will depend upon the goal of the learner. Following this, Brown

proposed three categories for the target of teaching English Pronunciation: One is major world

accents, which implies the imitation of a standard variety of English such as British, American,

or Canadian. The advantages of this program are the large number of materials which are

available, but the disadvantage is that it ignores the learner’s attitude towards the model (2014,

pp.161-162). Another approach proposed by Brown is model speakers, in which the learner

chooses a real individual to model their pronunciation at their image. This has the advantage of

not canceling the learner’s attitude or identity towards the accent but has little or none material to

work with. Lastly, Brown proposed Jenkin’s Lingua Franca Core which focuses on

intelligibility between non-native speakers and proposes to adopt the sounds which are crucial

for intelligibility and to drop the ones which are not.

As Tracey and Murray pointed out, “the purposes for communication may vary to a

greater extent when immigrants integrate socially in the target culture, which is an important

difference from EIL environments” (2005, p.380), in other words, intelligibility is the goal for

English language learners who will communicate in the EIL environment but won’t be enough

for the ESL speakers who want or have to integrate with them into the inner circle of the NS.

What Jenkins proposes: “attention should, therefore, be focused on those features that disrupt

intelligibility for NNS–NNS interaction, since these interactions are far more common than

NNS–NS or NS–NS (Brown, 2014, p.162)” may be fruitful to a great extent between NNS, but

might be contra-producing to NNS who won't be able to communicate intelligibly with a NS.
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Concentrating now on the speakers which have to communicate in the inner-circle, it is

important to indicate that non-standard varieties are usually discriminated upon, and that, as

Speicher and Bielanski stated, standard use is co-related to professional development (2000,

p.158) moreover, they exposed how stigmatized accents are commonly associated with

carelessness and laziness, and that accent and language influence job applications, university

acceptance and social mobility (p.159). They argue that to change all of this, the goal of teachers

should veer to “repertoire building and communicative competence” (p.159). Walker agrees with

this, stating that “job interviews often require Standard English speech and candidates may be

rejected on the basis of non-standard usage” (199, p.335). This discrimination towards a

language cannot be overlooked, and something must be done about this. If this discrimination is

happening, how is it possible that we teach our students a system of pronunciation as the one

proposed by Jenkin’s? What kind of tools will we give them for their future if they will only be

capable of communicating with NNS and won’t be even considered for certain jobs? Walker

exposes how teaching Standard English should serve to provide access to power and privilege:

[…] learning Standard English provides access to the power and privilege of its

traditional discourse community (Hirsch, 1977). However, such access is not equal.

There is an unavoidable advantage to those whose language was declared standard and a

similar disadvantage to those whose speech was declared divergent deficient by

comparison to the standard (1999, 342).

Teaching standard varieties then engenders a dichotomy: is education a means to socialization or

liberation? (Walker, 1999), are we giving learners the right tools if we teach them the Standard

variety? What the author proposes as a solution is to make the standard language available as a

resource to all, which will help in job interviews and could help subordinated groups to access
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power and influence. For the author, “teaching the standard language for reasons of efficient

communication should not mean the loss of individual identity and consciousness” (pp.344-345).

She proposes that showing children that the Standard is not the superior language, but the

socially approved, would provide a healthy atmosphere to teach the accepted form. This theory

does not consider the fact that children would not understand why their language is not accepted

nor why they must adopt a new one without having a sense of being wrong or alienated.

For Matsuda (2003), English is commonly being taught from the inner-circle perspective

and a way to diminish the power that the inner circle has over the teaching of English is to

incorporate World Englishes to teach EIL. She claims that most of the material that Japanese

students have to learn English portrays mostly standard speakers of English and a few Japanese

speakers, as she states: “the representation of exchanges between nonnative speakers of English

(NNSs), which is believed to be increasing […] is infrequent and sporadic” (720), leaving behind

and unknown many EIL as Indian or Singapore, making learners feel ashamed of their accents

and feeling non-standard, while there is a world of NNS with their own Englishes and accents.

She encourages teachers to present NNS to the class, for the students to engage with NNS and

therefore can realize that a standard accent is not necessary for accomplishing effective

communication, thus, enhancing their self-image and that of their accent.

Conclusions

As we have seen so far, there is not a correct answer to pronunciation teaching. Teaching

a standard accent implies being part of the status quo, being accepted in certain jobs, and not

being discriminated, but at the same time, becoming an active participant on the discriminative

system, it diminishes individual identities and uses education as a means of socialization instead

of liberation. Simply put, teaching a standard variety helps to impose the paradigm of society,
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which usually benefits a small privileged group, and suppresses different ways of interaction,

communication, and identity in which the repressed minorities express themselves. What is the

solution then? If we teach a standard accent, we are taking away liberties, but if we do not teach

it, we are taking away opportunities. I think the answer to this question has to do with

communication and proper education, not indoctrination. If we show the students what is really

happening with English as a Lingua Franca, if we explain the pros and cons of speaking a

standard pronunciation, if we explain how colonization, globalization, and power are behind the

propagation of English, they will have the sufficient knowledge to decide by themselves how

they want to speak and how they want to communicate. I think that choosing for the children,

choosing for the students immediately suppresses their liberties, English classes should then not

only focus on the grammar itself but on the context behind learning English. Why are we

learning English and how do we want to learn it? This may pose a problem in crowded

classrooms, in which student’s goals will differ, but groups can be made, sessions can be

divided, arguments and debates can be proposed, so that each learner identifies with the English

he or she is learning, and then, the problem of indoctrination, of socialization, won’t be a

problem anymore, because the decision will be on the student, they will have free will to choose

between adopting a standard accent, using a model speaker or communicating by Jenkin’s

Lingua Franca Core. As Speicher and Bielanski proposed (2000), “if we can recognize the

prevalence and largely unquestioned acceptance of Standard Ideology […] we can begin to

combat the ubiquitous linguicism in our school system, our offices, our society” if people are

aware of the fact that there is a Standard Ideology, an ideology of dominance, linguistic

discrimination will be tackled.

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Bibliography

Brown, A. (2014). Pronunciation and phonetics: A practical guide for English language

teachers. New York: Routledge.

Matsuda, A. (2003). Incorporating World Englishes in Teaching English as an International

Language. TESOL Quarterly, 37(4), 719-729. DOI:10.2307/3588220

Speicher, B., & Bielanski, J. (2000). Critical Thoughts on Teaching Standard English.

Curriculum Inquiry, 30(2), 147-169. Retrieved June 25, 2020, from

www.jstor.org/stable/3202094

Walker, L. (1990). Standard English and the Teaching of Literacy. Canadian Journal of

Education / Revue Canadienne De L'éducation, 15(4), 334-347. DOI:10.2307/1495108