Greetings, I am from London, I speak Londonish (bruv). I can speak in a clear accent but meet me in the pub and that goes out of the window. I’m planning to move to Taiwan (once I have adequate funds and have finished my online TEFL course) hopefully at the end of summer.
What is the experience some people have had teaching english in Taiwan and neutralising their accents?
I wouldn’t bother.
I have a very mild Lowland Scottish/Edinburgh accent, slightly Anglified/Americanised by years working in the City of Lahndun (with Cockney Bankers), and being here. Think Sean Connery.
Taiwanese claim they can’t get my accent, and they wish I was an American, like, say, Sean Connery.
In fact it gives them an alibi, plus its good for them.
Just brush up on the ryming slang, plus the usual chin-chimery, cor blimey, strike a light, forty fhasand fevvas on a frush stuff…
Like Parker, y’know?
If you insist on trying to “merge”, the other International Rescue characters (cept Lady Penelope) are a fair rendition of American English CD-speak that you might want to copy. Maybe a bit too animated though, so you’ll probably be asked to slow it down some.
The baddies (who of course are not American) provide the token multi-cultural-globalised-society element.
Ex - cel -ent
Sean Connery, American?! I thought he was Spanish.
Don’t ‘neutralise’ your accent. It benefits no-one.
South Africans who suddenly develop “American” accents. There are very few things funnier than listening to an Afrikaner who can’t speak English, doing it in American.
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I guess I am specifically referring to things such as the glottal stop in words with T for example. How many people in London pronounce the word water, “wa’er” minus the T. dropping G’s at the ends of words, it commonly thought of to be incorrect English, but it is afterall how English people speak.
Also, I have been told quite a few times that I have a foreign ‘twang’ to my accent, this probably has to do with the people who I grew up with, myself included, having parents that are not from the UK.
‘Water’: Taiwanease students will tell you your vowel is wrong: they won’t pick up the consonant.
I think most from London are fine but unfortunately accents are important for teachers. Hate me if you like but there are numerous regions in all of the native English speaking countries that have strong accents. Just in the US there is the yooper accent (think Fargo), the Boston accent, the deep south drawl, Appalachia and others. I have met some English and Scottish travelers that I couldn’t even understand. Note - that not everybody from a region has a strong accent.
Just to show the effect that this has young kids. I had a co-teacher that was British educated and she had a subtle accent. The students in the one class that we shared also had a subtle British accent. Subtle is fine since everyone has some sort of accent. Small amounts of Fargo are natural for me but students speaking with a full blown drawl would not be okay for parents imo.
Originally from Long Island, grew up in the Pacific Northwest. I still have a “New Yawk” accent, but have managed to smooth it out into something resembling Standard English after years away.
But I still say “wawda” for “water”. Funny enough I still have a job.
Don’t conform. Tell them that you invented the language and that Chinese students learn British English, so there’s nothing wrong with it.
[quote=“Abacus”]I think most from London are fine but unfortunately accents are important for teachers. Hate me if you like but there are numerous regions in all of the native English speaking countries that have strong accents. Just in the US there is the yooper accent (think Fargo), the Boston accent, the deep south drawl, Appalachia and others. I have met some English and Scottish travelers that I couldn’t even understand. Note - that not everybody from a region has a strong accent.
Just to show the effect that this has young kids. I had a co-teacher that was British educated and she had a subtle accent. The students in the one class that we shared also had a subtle British accent. Subtle is fine since everyone has some sort of accent. Small amounts of Fargo are natural for me but students speaking with a full blown drawl would not be okay for parents imo.[/quote]
Abacus, I’m guessing you’re from the US, though. Brits and most EFL speakers have no really difficulty with understanding accents after a little exposure. I say this as someone who teaches at a uni with native and non-native teachers from all over the world. It’s simply not perceived as a negative as most of them aspire to work in international companies later on where the ability to speak and understand global English is perceived as desirable. Also, they may wish to do international tests in the future, such as IELTS and TOEFL. How will they work in ENglish if they can’t even understand English people? 
Taiwanese children will not take on any significant amount of a teacher’s accent: they just speak like Chinese L1 English learners.
Also, Taiwanese people have no idea where my accent is from until I tell them. It’s a strong northern English accent but they have no difficulty in understanding, as far as intermediate learners understand spoken English.
Authenticity is important. Children can cope with difference.
Authenticity is only important after a certain period of time. Authentic materials, and “authentic” as an excuse for non-standard, are not okay in the case of beginners. Who would want a beginning Mandarin teacher who had a Sichuanese accent? And yet “it’s still Mandarin”.
There are standard varieties within American and British English. Whether a teacher bothers depends on his understanding of his job and the degree to which he views himself as a professional.
I learned non-standard Taiwanese mandarin and now I speak it with non-standard Ningbo speakers. S’fine. It’s not that complex. Maybe it’s easier to understand different accents in mandarin because the variation is more around the initial consonants than the vowels? Dunno.
The guy’s from London! He has the standard accent . Perhaps just not a prestige accent. I don’t speak with anything approaching a standard British accent. Because there really isn’t one. Standard accents are actually prestige accents and are down to social class not location in Britain, for the large part and ‘putting one on’ makes you a figure of fun, not a professional. Some of my vowels are closer to American English than London English. Yet still I get paid. Because students get it. They really do. Even in Taiwan.
What’s the alternative to authenticity anyway? Him not teaching? Bad acting and trying to put on a comedy accent? Not everyone is Hugh Laurie. He’ll just sound bizarre trying to iron out his origins.
[quote=“Ermintrude”]I learned non-standard Taiwanese Mandarin and now I speak it with non-standard Ningbo speakers. S’fine. It’s not that complex. Maybe it’s easier to understand different accents in Mandarin because the variation is more around the initial consonants than the vowels? Dunno.
The guy’s from London! He has the standard accent . Perhaps just not a prestige accent. I don’t speak with anything approaching a standard British accent. Because there really isn’t one. Standard accents are actually prestige accents and are down to social class not location in Britain, for the large part and ‘putting one on’ makes you a figure of fun, not a professional. Some of my vowels are closer to American English than London English. Yet still I get paid. Because students get it. They really do. Even in Taiwan.
What’s the alternative to authenticity anyway? Him not teaching? Bad acting and trying to put on a comedy accent? Not everyone is Hugh Laurie. He’ll just sound bizarre trying to iron out his origins.[/quote]
You have completely misunderstood my post. For me it’s not important so much as what country you are from but rather how well you speak. Within reason accents are fine although there are some particularly strong regional accents (not 100% of the pop. though). Most likely the OP would not have any problems because of his London English accent.
No, I understand, it’s just that Brits think about accents in a different way, perhaps because have a LOT of variation in small areas. For example there is no ‘London’ accent: there are dozens. My sister sounds different from me because she grew up three miles from me. I have a strong regional accent, but most Brits do, as do 99% of EFL English speakers.
I don’t change mine at all. Thinking about it, I do make concessions with grammar, though, with sub-B2s with stuff like adopting American usages of perfect tenses and not using regional forms such as ‘amnt’, ‘do you not …?’, ‘will’ rather than ‘shall’ and ‘yous’. I think stuff like that is harder for learners to deal with and it’s also easier to model without slipping up. Makes me sound like a mess if I’m home and forget to codeswitch though.
Disclaimer: I only work for Brits so learners self-select to learn from Brits (although they don’t always get em due to those pesky equality rules).
This seems to be ‘controversial’, so I guess you may have problems, OP. fwiw, I was brought up in suburban Cheshire by a Manc, a German and a Glaswegian and I sound like Shaun Ryder crossed with Minnie Mouse in Allo Allo. Noone’sever even mentioned it.
Even in Ireland I can’t understand the lads from Kerry and Louth. That’s normal!
[quote=“Ermintrude”]No, I understand, it’s just that Brits think about accents in a different way, perhaps because have a LOT of variation in small areas. For example there is no ‘London’ accent: there are dozens. My sister sounds different from me because she grew up three miles from me. I have a strong regional accent, but most Brits do, as do 99% of EFL English speakers.
I don’t change mine at all. Thinking about it, I do make concessions with grammar, though, with sub-B2s with stuff like adopting American usages of perfect tenses and not using regional forms such as ‘amnt’, ‘do you not …?’, ‘will’ rather than ‘shall’ and ‘yous’. I think stuff like that is harder for learners to deal with and it’s also easier to model without slipping up. Makes me sound like a mess if I’m home and forget to codeswitch though.
Disclaimer: I only work for Brits so learners self-select to learn from Brits (although they don’t always get em due to those pesky equality rules).
This seems to be ‘controversial’, so I guess you may have problems, OP. fwiw, I was brought up in suburban Cheshire by a Manc, a German and a Glaswegian and I sound like Shaun Ryder crossed with Minnie Mouse in Allo Allo. Noone’sever even mentioned it. [/quote]
You still don’t get it. I’m talking about the type of accents that headhoncho points out. Your sister might have a different accent than you but I’m guessing both are intelligible from a variety of native and EFL speakers around the world. I’m guessing that a majority of London’s accents are perfectly fine but there are certainly some local accents in England/Scotland/Ireland/America/SA/etc that are extremely thick to the point that it is difficult to be understood. If I was a parent I wouldn’t want my child’s primary second language teacher to be heavily accented to that degree. And imo young children pick up a lot more of the accent than you think. I have even heard of some foreigners in Taiwan that speak like young women because those are typically the teachers and language exchange partners.
Whether or not someone says wawda or I’m gunna or yah is mostly unimportant although teachers should do what they can to speak clearly especially with young learners.
No, I do get it, I just disagree: your viewpoint is common in Asian EFL. I guess I was just writing about a few different things. Brits understand eachother, although English speakers from other countries might not. And so do EFL learners because they don’t have the bias towards what their American or Irish ears are expecting to hear. It’s simply not an issue for either comprehension or production, and I’ve worked in a university with 90 EFL teachers (in summer), from all over the English-speaking world, with many nns Europeans with all sorts of accents.
Adults generally pick up accents more than children. I’m told I have a Taiwan accent, for obvious reasons. Children just always sound like L1 Chinese speakers, for various reasons.
It’s a non-issue in terms of employment, if you are British, anyway. The accent is seen as useful because of the influence of stuff like IELTS. The OP will be in demand, if anything.
What is the standard English accent anyway? I mean, I guess it would be possible to tell that it English were a phonetic language, but it happens that there’s not always a clear relation among what is written and how people should read it. Just too many exceptions, they outnumber the rules!
I understand that a more “neutral” and “extended” accent sounds like “standard”, but I´m still curious about which one is considered “standard English” by the native speakers community. I also know that there are at least 2 standards, Am and Br English, leave apart Australian and other English accents…
So, in your opinion, what is a standard English (accent)?
And I do believe that kids and people in general pick up accents. I sound different if I’m talking a lot to native speakers than let’s say, Chinese native speakers, and I have read the same or similar experiences from other people here. Indeed, I had an interview some time ago with a British guy whose accent was totally Germanic. He was British but had been living over 15 years in Germany, and my English sounded more “normal” than his (well, in a sense 
).