Need help to teach ESL Indian Students

[jutfrank]

Ninja Turtle

I still don't really understand your difficulties, to be honest. Why all the fuss about British and American English? If you can't teach them International Standard English, then why not just focus on American English? I can't imagine why you are trying to emphasise the British variety, which, judging from what you say, is confusing them.

[NinjaTurtle]

There is no such thing as International Standard English. I have been affiliated with many EFL organizations over the years, and every organization (school) has always leaned towards either American English or British English. My present university in China has tried to pretend this problem doesn't exist, and I feel it has led to bad feelings all around. When a class has an American teacher at 8 am, an English ("London") teacher at 10 am, and a Scottish teacher at one-thirty, and everyone says there is no difference, this is doing a great disservice to the students.

A good EFL speaker will be comfortable in both American English and British English. A speaker who speaks a mish-mash of both sounds terrible.

A Chinese person who comes to America and only speaks British English comes across as being rather odd. And a Chinese person who comes to America and doesn't know the American equivalent for "go on holiday" sounds both odd and uneducated.

[jutfrank]

When a class has an American teacher at 8 am, an English ("London") teacher at 10 am, and a Scottish teacher at one-thirty, and everyone says there is no difference, this is doing a great disservice to the students.

What do you perceive to be the differences? Regardless of where the teachers come from, they should all be teaching the same language. I appreciate that there are some differences between how Americans, English and Scots speak, but most of these are with pronunciation. Teachers need to make sure they try to standardise the forms they teach in class as much as possible.

Other differences are those of vocabulary, but I can't see how this is a problem. You don't have to teach them to say holiday when you can just teach vacation. Of course, there is some lexical difference between varieties of English, but not a lot in the core vocabulary. And besides, all native-speakers worldwide can understand American English without any problem.

A Chinese person who comes to America and only speaks British English comes across as being rather odd. And a Chinese person who comes to America and doesn't know the American equivalent for "go on holiday" sounds both odd and uneducated.

I don't really agree, but it's interesting that you think that. There is not enough difference between them for this to be an intelligibility problem, in my opinion.

[NinjaTurtle]

jutfrank,

I appreciate how you think this is not important, but I think it is.

[J&K Tutoring]

If we could perhaps circle back to the OP, I don't think it's at all unreasonable for a teacher to want to teach a specific accent. Customer Service Call Centers need workers who can use the same accent and idioms as their customers. However wrongly, callers don't have much confidence in the knowledge of a responder who speaks with a heavy (foreign) accent.

For the American Accent, the OP might take a look at: American Accent Training by Ann Cook (ISBN-13: 978-0-7641-9651-5) It's a book and 2CD set designed for self study, but I think better with some coaching.

[Tdol]

If you look at or for accent reduction, you may find some help:

https://www.usingenglish.com/links/S...ion/index.html

[Piscean]

A good EFL speaker will be comfortable in both American English and British English..

If you are suggesting that EFL speakers should be able to produce both American and British English varieties (which specific dialects had you in mind?), You are asking a great deal of them. Few native speakers of one of these varieties can produce a convincing version of the other.

I always tried to expose my learners to a wide range of English varieties in their listening activities; learners who were exposed only to my accent would have some difficulty even with native speakers from other parts off southern England. However, expecting learners to be able to identify varieties and to be able to switch from one to another seems to me to be a teacher's whim rather than sound practice.

[Piscean]

There is no such thing as International Standard English.

While there may be no official ISE, most people involved in EFL appear to accept that there are not many significant differences between the formal/semi-formal writing of most native speakers of British, American, Australian, New Zealand, etc, varieties.

and everyone says there is no difference

Those who say there is no difference between the varieties of English spoken by native speakers from London, Glasgow and New York are indeed misleading learners.

A Chinese person who comes to America and only speaks British English comes across as being rather odd. And a Chinese person who comes to America and doesn't know the American equivalent for "go on holiday" sounds both odd and uneducated.

That is simply not true. Such Chinese people would sound no more odd or uneducated than any native speaker of BrE going to America.