Which dialect(s) should be taught to foreign learners of English?

Which dialect(s) should be taught to foreign learners of English?

Almost a hundred years ago, Daniel Jones (1918) published a book about the phonology system of British English. This book, An Outline of English Phonetics, described a variation of the language (Received Pronunciation - RP) that was used by the educated upper class (Nádasdy, 2007, p. 17). In the last few decades an observable change has taken place in the vowel system of British English (Lindsey, 2012), a change so decisive, that this new variation should not even be considered to be a variation of RP but a new dialect called Standard Southern British English (Lindsey, n.d.). In my opinion it is very important that teachers should be aware of these changes and should also raise the foreign learners’ attention to them in order to help them to achieve as high English knowledge as possible. This essay is going to support this idea by examining the question of which dialect(s) of English should be taught to foreign learners and why.

In my experience in Hungary a standard variation of British English (and not American English) is taught in schools. British English has several dialects and regional variations (Nádasdy, 2007, p. 112) and the choice of one variation for teaching purposes is quite complex as several factors (such as social acceptance, prestige, or the range of dialects) should be taken into consideration. Eskey (1976) argues that even though standard dialects are not superior to nonstandard dialects, this does not mean that they should not be taught in schools. On the contrary, he writes that it is possible to value nonstandard dialects and teach the standard forms because “ “learning standard English” might better be described as developing a greater knowledge and control” (Eskey, 1976, p. 31) of the language, and it is a normal part of getting educated. It is true that with these statements he addresses native nonstandard speakers of English but it can also be applied to non-native learners if we consider foreign accents as nonstandard versions of English.

It is also very important that “we are responsible as teachers for providing our students with the knowledge and skills that they will need to get along in [the] society” (Eskey, 1976, p. 31) of the target language speakers. If nonstandard dialects were taught to foreign learners they would have more difficulty in a standard-speaking environment. It is of course true that if a learner’s goal is to achieve a basic communicative competence then for them it is not the most important factor which dialect to learn, but in my opinion every learner should be given the opportunity to acquire as high a knowledge about the target language as possible.

It is clear that there are good reasons for teaching a standard variation to foreign learners, but there are still problems with which standard dialect to teach. As already mentioned above there are two main variations of standard British English: one is used by native speakers in Great Britain (SSBE, which stands for Standard Southern British English) and one that has survived in variations that are spoken outside Great Britain and which many foreign learners still aim to acquire. This is known as Received Pronunciation (RP). It is still has a high prestige amongst foreign learners of English as this variation has a highlighted position in course books and dictionaries.

According to Lindsey (2012), RP “had a large and considerably unnatural vowel system requiring most of the primary cardinals, two secondary cardinals /ɒ/ and /ʌ/, plus the non-cardinals /æ/, /ɪ/ and /ʊ/, in addition to the neutral vowel schwa.”  Short vowels, long vowels and diphthongs had different vowel-qualities, and “RP was marked by a prevalence of centring diphthongs.”  SSBE, however, has a more simple phonological system and it can be described by using only the eight cardinal vowels /i, e, ɛ, a, u, o, ɔ, ɑ/ and two central vowels /ɵ/ and /ə/. These are the short/lax vowels and all the other segments of SSBE’s vowel inventory can be described by use of reference qualities of these vowels. In the following tables we can see the vowel system that is described by Gimson (1962) (see Fig. 1.) and Lindsey (2012) (see Fig.2.)

	Plain Tense	Broken Tense	Plain Lax	Broken Lax
Y/I	aɪ	aɪə	ɪ	ɜ:
E	i:	ɪə	e	ɜ:
A	eɪ	eɪə	æ	ɑ:
O	oʊ	oʊə	ɒ	ɔ:
U	u:	ʊə	ʊ	u:

Figure 1.

Short/Lax	Yod-diphthongs	W-diphthongs	R-vowels
ɪ	ɪj		ɪ:
ɛ	ɛj		ɛ:
a	ɑj	aw	ɑ:
ə		əw	ə:
ɔ	oj		ɔ:
ɵ		ʉw	ɵ:

Figure 2.

It is clear that radical changes have taken place in the British English vowel system and that several vowels that used to be part of RP’s vowel inventory do not exist anymore.

Even though it is more comfortable to teach RP, I think that every teacher should be aware of the changes that have taken place in it and should also raise their students’ attention to them. It is also very important that, regardless of the lack of teaching materials, teachers should try to teach the variation of English that is currently actually spoken by native speakers. This can be achieved if the teachers set an example with their pronunciation (it is the teachers who should acquire the current British pronunciation first), and if the learners meet with as much current British English speech samples, as possible. 

In my opinion a radical change is needed in foreign English teaching, otherwise people will keep teaching and learning a variation of English that does not exist anymore, and thus they will fail to achieve a high communicative competence (they will not be able to identify and adjust to the proper variation that should be used).

List of references

Eskey, D. (1976). Standard/Nonstandard English: Toward a Balanced View. The English Journal, 65.9, 28-31. http://www.jstor.org/stable/815745

Lindsey, G. (2012, March 8). The British English vowel system. [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://englishspeechservices.com/blog/british-vowels/

Lindsey, G. (n.d.) Standard BrE. Current British English. Retrieved from http://tiny.cc/olydex

Nádasdy, Á. and Kálmán, L. (2007). Hajnali hárompercesek a nyelvről. Retrieved from http://budling.nytud.hu/~kalman/arch/hajnali.pdf