The chat in the coffee breaks went in various different directions this week. We started off chatting about learning and teaching online, as one participant would be going back to in-person university courses soon, but with a hybrid aspect to cater to interational students. This led us to thinking about the difficulties of hybrid in a communicative classroom as well as the challenges of teaching phonology behind a mask – whilst regulations at the centre say the teacher can wear a face shield at a distance of two metres from the students, this doesn’t allow for students to practise sounds with each other with the same visual quality.
We went on to chat about the British Council Aptis exams, as another Hubster runs dedicated preparation courses for these exams. As a relatively new exam – though seemingly gaining popularity in Spain, Poland, Turkey and Latin America – preparation material was quite limited so the teacher was creating a lot of her own resources for the lessons.
We chatted a little about the popularity of different exams and exam boards in various countries – the Cambridge main suite exams are still hugely popular in Spain, Cambridge CAE and IELTS were both popular choices for people looking to move to Australia, and the Duolingo test is accepted for entry to university in Ireland. In the afternoon break, exams also came up – but then we were chatting about the inauthentictity of oral exams. As many exams are based on a script which examiners have to adhere to quite strictly, it makes conversations with candidates quite unnatural at times. For example, if you ask a candidate what they did at the weekend and they respond with something wildly exciting, ‘Thank you’ doesn’t seem like the most appropriate response!
On the topic of exams, we also questioned how well first-language English speakers would fare in a C2 exam…yet this is generally the requirement placed on second-language English users in order to get work as English teachers. This led on to talk around native speakerism and accentism, with a couple of our Irish participants experiencing discrimination because of their accents. The topic of descriptive and prescriptive grammar also came up briefly, in terms of thinking about what people say as well as how they say it – in my recent binge-watching Castle, I’ve noticed a lot of ‘What do we got?’ from Detective Beckett and one Hubster mentioned working with third-culture children and how the phrases they come out with can sometimes be seen as ‘incorrect’ by someone not familiar with their parents’ linguistic heritage.
Authenticity came up as well in thinking about coursebook materials, as well as the accents our learners are most familiar with. Working in Australia, one Hubster mentioned that her students struggled to understand the Australian background having come from Asia or Europe where American and British English was taught. Considering materials, there was a question of whether coursebooks even have authentic varieties of English – is the Australian you’re hearing really just a voice actor from Oxford? Voices – a new coursebook series from National Geographic – has a strong focus on varieties of English and using second-language English speakers as models for pronunciation activities, so there are definitely steps being made in the right direction. An excellent resource for exposing learners to more accents is the Dialects Archive in which speakers from around the world have been recorded reading a scripted text and speaking freely – great for learners to hear and compare different accents in English and perhaps a useful resource for any teachers looking to find out more about potential pronunciation problems their learners may have. It’s also worth revisiting the notes from Lina’s webinar for more ideas and useful resources.
Another suggestion for exposing learners to different accents was inviting guests to speak during our lessons. One Hubster mentioned having asked her mother and husband to record short audios for her students and another said she had invited guests to join classes, even pre-pandemic. This type of live listening is a fabulously authentic experience for our learners and we suggested it might be more beneficial for guests to be non-teachers, as we have a habit of modifying our speech to support learners’ listening. However, if anyone is interested in getting involved with a ‘guest-speaking’ project with other Hub members, let us know and we can put you in touch with other teachers.
Another project which was mentioned was a training course from Renewable English to make your classes a greener place to be – see Harry’s website for more details and look out for a post in the Hub sometimes soon… And on the topic of courses, we chatted about the difference in prices for online and in-person courses, as well as the huge difference in costs for an in-person course depending on location and a concern that if cheaper courses of the same quality are now readily available online, people will be discouraged from travelling to take an in-person course.
And that was today’s coffee breaks. Thanks to everyone who came along – as always we had questions prepped around recent topics from the Hub, but the conversations took the direction they wanted to!
1 thought on “Aptis, accentism and authenticity”