What If I Don't Have a "Standard" Accent?
Whether it’s South African, Filipino, or “standard” American, our accents are the local color that we bring to the English language.
But as tutors, some of us may wonder if we should stay loyal to our accent or change it to the accent that students want to learn.
Clarity > Accent
If you think your accent may be difficult for students to understand, there’s nothing to lose from adopting a more neutral one. However, rest assured that our students are less concerned about accents than becoming fluent.
For example, here are some comments (translated) that students left about a tutor who speaks with a noticeable French accent:
As you can see, the two negative comments are about her attitude. The five-star comment says that her English is “easy-to-understand.” In other words, there are no complaints about her accent!
And here are some comments for another tutor:
Notice that the comment with the one-star rating was about his attitude. Again, we see that accent is not what matters most. And the comment about him having an accent came with a five-star rating.
So at the end of the day, our main goal is to focus on helping students become fluent. If we keep that in mind, we’ll naturally slow down and enunciate more clearly. And if we believe that learning a standard or neutral accent will be of help, well, there’s no harm in doing that as well!
In fact, it’s quite common for language teachers to adopt a “standard” accent, which leads to our next point.
Learning a “Standard” Accent
It’s common for teachers of foreign languages to teach using a standard accent.
In fact, this is the case for any language, including the ones our students speak natively. Most Japanese, Korean, and Chinese teachers — no matter where in their country they’re originally from — adopt a standard accent in the classroom.
Similarly, it’s common for British teachers to use a standard accent known as “Received Pronunciation” in class, as this was considered the proper model of the language.
So there’s no shame in using a standard accent! If anything, adjusting our own accent can make us better at teaching pronunciation.
And we can always switch back to our original accent with higher-level students who should be learning to understand many different accents anyways. (This practice is a type of “code-switching.”)
Learning a Neutral Accent
Another option is to learn a “neutral accent.” A neutral accent is an accent that isn’t “standard” in any country, but is easy to understand for a large number of native speakers.
This concept of a “neutral accent” most likely came from the call center industry, where it makes more sense to train workers in a neutral global accent so they can accommodate customers from different parts of the world.
As tutors, what this means is that rather than trying to learn a standard American or British accent, we can learn features of English pronunciation that are common to most varieties of native English, such as rhythm, melody, word stress, and diphthongs.
With the exception of those who plan on living in a certain country, most of our students don’t seem to have a preference between American or British English. So having an accent somewhere in between may actually be preferable. In fact, here’s a comment that a student left about a South African tutor’s neutral accent:
👋 That’s it for now!
In sum, there’s no need to feel bad about having an accent — after all, we all have one, and no accent is better than another. However, if you are interested in changing your accent for teaching purposes, know that it is very possible and can also help you relate better to learners.
And while we’re on this topic, make sure to check out this website dedicated to accents from around the world as well as these videos about various English accents:
Happy tutoring!
