So, what is ‘real English’?
It’s the English spoken by native English speakers in everyday life.
All too commonly, students are taught in a classroom environment and learn what we call ‘classroom English’. This usually consists of slow, short, perfectly spoken sentences and phrases.
This can be a good introduction to spoken English. However, when students go to an English-speaking country, they’re often met with the harsh realisation that they can’t understand everything native English speakers are saying. This can lead to frustration and discouragement.
The earlier a learner comes face to face with ‘real English’, the better. It includes colloquialisms, slang and common phrases. These can change not only according to the English-speaking country a person comes from, but also according to the area, state or city.
What about accents?
In the UK alone, there are estimated to be more than 60 regional accents. For example, the Mancunian accent is very different from the Scouse accent, even though Manchester and Liverpool are less than 40 miles apart.
Each region has its own accent. Someone from Manchester might find it difficult to understand a speaker with a strong Cornish accent.
English accents don’t vary only by region. They can also reflect social background, age, occupation and personal experience. A labourer from Bristol, for example, may sound different from another person from the same area.
Accent strength and individual speech patterns vary widely. Native speakers may sometimes recognise where somebody is from, but it isn’t always possible to pinpoint a person’s background from their accent alone.
Is an RP accent the best?
Many learners believe that RP, or Received Pronunciation, is a common standard English accent. They’re often surprised to discover that it isn’t especially common.
Peter Trudgill wrote in Sociolinguistic Variation and Change that only about 3–5% of the population of England spoke RP.
Although this is a rough estimate rather than the result of a conclusive population study, it still illustrates that traditional RP is spoken by a relatively small number of people.
Traditional RP is familiar to many learners, but it represents only a small part of the range of English accents heard in everyday life.
If RP is a minority accent, why is it loved so much?
For many years, RP was seen as ‘standard’ or ‘posh’ English and was used extensively by the BBC.
Nowadays, we hear far more regional accents in the media. Accents in films and television have changed over the years to reflect more accurately the variety spoken across the UK.
Yet American films and sitcoms still sometimes use an actor with a put-on ‘posh’ English accent to represent a supposedly typical English person.
Marketing research also studies regional accents and how audiences perceive qualities such as intelligence, friendliness and trustworthiness. Sadly, accent discrimination still exists.
Probably because there’s no single agreed ‘neutral’ British accent, RP remains favoured by many English-teaching institutions.
Which accent should be taught?
This leads to the debate about which accent a learner should be taught. My experience has shown that learners usually pick up accents from the people they listen to most.
For example, I’ve taught East Asian students with American-sounding English accents because they watched lots of American films. I had one student who sounded Scottish because her teacher was Scottish, and a Hungarian student who sounded Welsh because, you guessed it, she lived in Wales.
Personally, I don’t think it matters which accent the learner acquires, as long as it’s consistent, clear and easily understood.
How do I teach English?
After many years of teaching English as a foreign language, I concluded that it’s best to teach students clear, neutral English that is as free as possible from a strong regional accent.
However, when it comes to listening skills, Simple English uses as much variety as possible, including programmes such as Coronation Street, EastEnders and Come Dine with Me. Online English lessons are ideal for screen sharing and using multimedia.
English students often find these programmes very difficult to understand at first because of the strong accents, slang and local phrases. However, I’ve seen vast improvements in short periods of time when using clips from these programmes in my English lessons.
One of my methods is to ask students to listen to short clips and transcribe them word for word as homework. During the online lesson, we go through the transcript together. I correct mistakes and explain new vocabulary and phrases.
It’s an excellent way to learn contextual phrases and explore features such as glottal replacement and dropped h’s and g’s.
The more familiar a student becomes with different regional accents, the more confident they’ll feel speaking with a wider variety of people. This can help them become more successful in their work and social life, and fit into a new environment more easily.
Learn the English people really speak.
If you’d like to learn ‘real’ English, schedule a free 20-minute meeting with me. Get ahead by learning to speak naturally and confidently.
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