Do you have a class, school or institute – or even national policy – about which variety of English to teach, such as American English (AmEng), British English (BrEng), New Zealand English (NZEng), English as a lingua franca (ELF) or English as an international language (EIL)? More specifically, is there a policy or preference for students to learn and use a specific accent or pronunciation style to sound a certain way?
This article briefly outlines a few of the main categorisations of English and related discussions (e.g. prestige languages), then looks at debates around simple intelligibility versus ‘sounding like an American / Brit / Australian / local’ or ‘sounding like what I am’. It also looks at a few considerations for teachers or policy makers when deciding on whether to have such a policy and what it might be. I leave the reader to make up their own mind – or continue their own thoughts. Many other articles in MET and in other places go into much greater depth if this article piques interest.
Varieties of English
There is ongoing debate about where boundaries lie between languages and dialects or whether there are boundaries at all. For this article, I’ll stick with the term ‘variety’ (Selvi et al., 2023). There are also several systems of categorising varieties, described below. Often such categories are based on the level of perceived ‘nativeness’ of the variety’s use or its prestige, such as BrEng or received pronunciation (RP) or AmEng being more ‘popular’ than NZEng, Hong Kong English, Irish English, African American vernacular English or Yorkshire variety. Often such varieties are categorised in contrast to varieties such as those used as a lingua franca or government tool in the Philippines, India or Singapore, or taught and used as a useful skill in Japan.
Beyond trying to link a variety of English to a national, regional or ethnic group, other well-known and overlapping varieties or categorisations include the following (Selvi et al., 2023):
- ELF is often seen as a pragmatic, useful and neutral variety for a globalised world where encounters in English between people who speak it as a second or further language are far more common that encounters involving speakers where English is their primary language. ELF has moved beyond a residue of colonisation to a simple practical tool focused on core communication with what some say is simplified grammar and vocabulary to the level needed in the moment (Jenkins, 2014; Teng & Wang, 2020).
- EIL is often seen as a classroom-focused subject with examples and models, and students deliberately developing communication skills for use in international settings (Walker et al., 2021).
- In world Englishes (WEs), Kachru’s circles of English (1985) are the best known of several conceptualisations of this, although there is concern about implied prestige hierarchy and some discussion of whether BrEng, Indian English, Nigerian English or Korean English, for example, should be listed as different Englishes or as different varieties of English (singular) (Chia, 2021; Jenkins, 2014; Onysko, 2021).
- Global Englishes (GE) is seen as an umbrella term for the above and other terms, and focuses on plurality, diversity and fluidity in use of English (Galloway & Rose, 2018).
Sounding like . . . or intelligible?
When it comes to pronunciation, the question is what the students are aiming to sound like, if anything. Or perhaps, it’s what the teachers, educational system or parents are desiring that students sound like, if anything.
There are genuine reasons to want to ‘sound American’, to develop RP (or the king’s or BBC English), or sound like a local in countries such as Australia. Wanting to fit in, have a higher chance of succeeding at a job interview (Pilott, 2016), pass an exam which has such a standard variety as a benchmark, or reach a personal goal of what you feel is a marker of success in language learning are all genuine and valid reasons. It is possible that these goals came from experience of accent discrimination, which says less about the student and more about the person they interacted with. But we also have to wonder whether those goals are necessary, or came from lack of awareness of ELF, EIL, WEs and GE.
There are equally genuine, and perhaps more practical, reasons to aim not for ‘sounding American / British / etc.’ but for being intelligible. As mentioned above, worldwide most use of English is among second-plus-language (L2) users of it where communication is the goal. Jenkins (2014) and Walker et al. (2021) are among many sources outlining core pronunciation features for intelligibility, such as: certain consonants; consonant clusters; vowel length; and stresses. If someone asks for a glass or bottle of water, it doesn’t really matter whether the nouns there sound like they are spoken by King Charles, George W. Bush, Crocodile Dundee or David Beckham – so long as there is sufficient intelligibility that a glass / cup / bottle of H2O is what they end up with. Realistically, it is unlikely that ‘imperfect’ pronunciation will mean they end up with a class full of water, a battle for water, or any confusion over whether Walter wants water.
***** PLACE IMAGE: p14-Walter.jpg
Another aspect here is people wanting to sound like what they are: a person from Germany, China, Russia or Brazil who is communicating using English. In many cases, dropping linguistic markers of their identity is neither needed nor desired (Norton, 2013; Teng & Wang, 2020; Walker et al., 2021). Maintaining such an identity is just as valid as seeing an L1 accent as a marker of language learner success or of their English-using identity.
Chia (2021) and Selvi et al., (2021) suggest introducing such concepts to the classroom through discussions about who students expect to use English with and where, as well as who ‘owns’ the language; in addition we could read or listen to short texts related to relevant history and varied uses of English. They suggest using various role models of teachers or celebrities speaking publicly in effective, intelligible English with an accent, whether non-English or using a ‘non-prestige’ variety. This helps to moderate students’ listening to accommodate different accents or pronunciation variations.
Another suggestion is students researching and presenting to peers on an aspect of this topic of some interest or relevance to them, due to travel plans, past contact with people using that variety or simple curiosity (Galloway & Rose, 2018). Further, Walker et al. (2021) and Walker and Archer (2024) discuss students identifying what aspects of their own pronunciation might cause comprehensibility difficulties in a multilingual context, then accommodating for this by focusing on those aspects of their pronunciation.
Considerations
When deciding what policy you want regarding which English variety to teach, and weather you want a policy at all, you might consider several things. These include: practicalities; awareness-raising for staff and students; client demand; and existing policy – including whether or not you are allowed to make or suggest policy yourself.
Regarding practicalities, consider how the students expect to need to use English. Are you teaching them in Australia or Ireland and they need to use English locally and with multinational classmates? Are you teaching monolingual classes in their home country, and if so, does your school have a partner institute in a specific country where the students expect to visit? In both cases, do students have diverse plans for future English use?
What resources (including time, energy, finances and permission or autonomy) do you have available for highlighting the existence of, or for developing skills in, different varieties of English? Does the local context consider one variety to have prestige and to be the primary goal?
Regarding awareness-raising and demand, Selvi et al. (2021) suggest that diverse hiring practices and materials, alongside specific professional development workshops, can help. However, they also point out that while many teachers and students are open to the ideas above, policy makers, fee-paying parents and some students themselves are not always open to these ideas. Others, such as Cameron and Galloway (2019) and Choe and Lee (2024), have similar findings.
This may be due to inflexible policy, uncertainty about changing it, ingrained values for retaining L1-speaker models and bias for face value and marketing reasons. Developing awareness and exposure to the existence and utility of varieties such as ELF, EIL, WEs and GE may be a necessary first step to increase demand for change.
A final consideration returns to the ethics of identity; perhaps we do want to encourage students to have a ‘successful language learner’ identity including a prestige accent. Perhaps we hope that sets them up for success in some contexts. But perhaps they don‘t want to lose existing audible identity markers, or to be told it gives a negative impression. Shvidko et al. (2015) found some students returning from studying abroad being viewed by peers as having been disloyal to a national identity if they had reduced their home accent.
So what do you think? Do you have a class, school or higher-level policy on this? Do you need one? Do we need to decide how our students should aim to sound (beyond ‘intelligible’)? If you have the choice, what would you do?
