It is our job as English B teachers to ensure that our students are exposed to a variety of accents. If you don’t believe me, go and read page 25 of the IBO Language B guide (2019).
Despite this explicit instruction, I often hear North American or ‘The King’s English’ when listening to audio extracts from textbooks and even the listening comprehension exams.
Why should we take the time to explore other accents? Well, because we live in a globalised world and our students are going to come across people who speak English in ways that sound different to what they’ve heard before.
Also because language is culture, and the amazing dialects, idioms and intonation are the result of a country’s history and are constantly evolving along with the people. So, if we want to know more about a country, we need to listen to its people.
Listening to different accents also promotes empathy or international-mindedness. There is no one correct way to ‘speak English’. Despite this, I’ve been told on many occasions as a resident in Chile that I don’t speak ‘proper English’, despite the fact that I’m an Australian and a native English speaker. What sort of education were these people given which made them think they had the authority to classify people and their way of communication into ‘proper’ and 'non-proper’? The IB’s mission statement aims to create a more peaceful world, and we cannot achieve this by judging someone on how they say hello.
Of course, as language teachers we aim to help our students communicate clearly enough that they will be understood, so aspects like accuracy and word choice are important. Read one of my blog posts on fluency for more thoughts on this. For now though, I challenge you to think of how you could expose your students to different cultures and ways of life through different accents.
I know how pressed for time you all are, so here are some ideas on how to explore a variety of different accents with no extra planning - I’ve done it all for you! Wink, wink, they are also great ways to practice for Paper 1 listening comprehension!
For Australian accents, try this resource
For Canadian and Filipino accents, try this resource
For ‘Hollywood’ accents, try this resource
For Irish accents, try this resource and this resource
For New Zealand accents, try this resource
For Scottish accents, check out this resource
For South African accents, try this resource
For a variety of accents, try this resource, and this one
I’m sure you’ll notice that this is in no way an exhaustive list of resources and there are still MANY others I’m yet to include. I’m working on that, and this is a starting point. I hope you found these helpful. Until next month, enjoy listening!
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