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LETTERS: Accents do matter

I disagree with the thesis on language Nigel Daly argued in your paper (“Acquiring a native accent not essential,” page 8, March 28). A native accent and correct English grammar should be the ultimate goal of English learners in Taiwan. This is especially true because they are learning English as a foreign language and don’t get practice speaking with foreigners on a daily basis.

Daly rightly points out that there are several different native accents, but to expect a learner of English in Taiwan to be able to distinguish between these accents makes about as much sense as expecting a foreign learner of Mandarin to distinguish between a Beijing accent and a Taipei accent. In both cases, there is one language that is being spoken in slightly different ways: The question is not which of these accents the speaker uses, but whether or not the speaker can make himself understood. My point is that a Taiwanese speaker who hasn’t had a lot of experience speaking to foreigners will not be understood by the vast majority of foreigners if he uses a thick accent and/or incorrect grammar.

The essential problem is that the classroom environment is, in many ways, an artificial setting: The teacher — a native speaker or a Taiwanese — is trained to understand poorly spoken English. Tourists or businesspeople coming to Taiwan would not be so well trained in understanding the way some Taiwanese speak English. For this reason, teachers need to correct student’s mistakes even if the teacher was able to understand what the speaker meant to say.

That being said, students are not limited to having to imitate their teacher’s accent: They can also rely on movies or TV to provide them with other examples of English as spoken by native speakers. It is worth noting that movies and TV programs are frequently shown in countries other than their country of origin and, thus, even if the speakers use a variety of accents, the accents that the speakers use must always be accents that are well understood around the world.

The classroom environment is also artificial in the sense that it is usually the teacher who asks questions and students who answer them; the teacher therefore typically expects a certain kind of response. However, in real life situations, the students will sometimes have to initiate conversations and ask their own questions. But as the types of questions students can ask are unlimited, there is less context in such a situation and more room for ambiguity.

Despite Daly’s claim to the contrary, tense is one of the causes for this sort of ambiguity. If a Taiwanese speaker of English said to a native speaker of English: “I go to see a movie,” it wouldn’t be clear whether the speaker meant he went to see a movie, is going to go to see a movie or goes to the movies regularly. Daly claims that the gap can be overcome through “repetition” or “pausing,” but most of us would agree that this sort of confusion could only be described as a breakdown in communication. It would ultimately be up to the Taiwanese speaker to provide the missing information.

Martin Phipps

Taichung


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