accent article analysis- Miss kelly

Teacher ‘told to sound less northern’ after southern Ofsted inspection

A school in Berkshire has argued that one of their employees should alter her northern accent when she’s interacting with children. There has been much debate around the topic but I couldn’t agree more. Before I observe hateful comments about how I could be so ignorant, I do not think she should change her accent so to speak but I do agree that certain accents can impact how an individual pronounces certain words, and this can alter whether they are speaking in standard English or not.

Would you want your child to pick up incorrect lexical habits from their teachers? Isn’t a teacher supposed to be a role model for our children in every aspect of the word? We are putting our children in the care of these teachers in the hope that they will develop our children’s vocabulary not tarnish it. You may not think that the way in which a teacher speaks will impact the way your child does but you couldn’t be more wrong. Regardless of how you may be speaking in the home, your children spend on average 6 hours a day at school with their teachers and peers, that’s 30 hours a week. That isn’t including any additional time they spend at school by doing extra-curricular activities. Regardless of if your child hasn’t picked up on the way in which their teacher speaks, if their friends speak using elision then they will most likely alter their language to feel socially accepted in their group of friends.

I can completely appreciate that the way in which someone speaks is a form of identity. However a teacher’s job is to educate our children, your children. The way in which we speak can impact us on so many levels. A job interview for example. It comes down to two people, both male, one articulates himself to a very high standard, and he has a subtle regional North London accent and doesn’t use any colloquial language. On the other hand, there’s the other man going for the job who has a very strong regional North London accent who uses colloquial language frequently and doesn’t pronounce his lexical choices fully. Who would you hire?

If all teachers spoke using non-standard English similarly to the teacher in Berkshire then there would be no hope. What type of a world is it going to be if everyone speaks using slang and colloquial language because of the way they were taught in school? An uneducated one.

When a first impression occurs we subconsciously judge each other on a variety of phenomenon’s. One of them is the way in which someone speaks, for example, if they use colloquial language, we assume that they lack an expected standard of intelligence. Similarly, I guarantee, the students of this teacher have doubted their teacher’s intelligence at one point or another due to her incorrect pronunciation of her lexical choices because of her strong accent.

Of course embrace where you’re from do not disguise apart of yourself to please others! But speak correctly; you can obtain a strong regional accent, regardless of where you’re from as well as speaking with Standard English.