[etni] native speakers
- From: "Sharon Tzur" <sharontzu5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "etni" <etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 13:40:21 +0300
**** ETNI on the web http://www.etni.org.il http://www.etni.org ****
Recently I read a wonderful book. It was an autobiographical account written
by a man who was born in a remote Chinese village who went on to study
English at a university in Bejing. Eventually, he not only mastered English,
but - a few years after he moved to America, he wrote a wonderful book. ( I
forget the name of the book, but I remember that it had the word "river" in
it.)
This man clearly mastered the English language to the extent that he has
become an author in addition to being a teacher. How much more competence
could one expect from an English teacher. Now, it may be that the number of
people who acquire native-like proficiency in a language that is not their
first language is small, but they do exist. I'm with those who demand
native-like proficiency.
As to accents, I certainly don't see a heavy accent as a reason to quit the
English teaching profession. Firstly, I don't see why an Israeli accent is
any worse than other heavily accented versions of English - such as a strong
Southern Accent (y'all) or a strong Scottish accent, a strong Australian
accent, etc. (And people from those areas would probably find an American
accent strange to their ear.) My only reservation is that one who teaches
English should make an effort to learn to make distinctions between the
various vowel sounds; for example, students must hear that "ship" and
"sheep" are not pronounced the same way. Similarly, teachers whose native
tongue is Arabic should try to learn to pronoun those consonants that do not
exist in Arabic (like "p"). In the event that a teacher is unable to make
these sounds (which is possible, because we can't always learn to make
sounds that we were not exposed to in our formative years), students should
be exposed to taped material, radio and television broadcasts so that they
can get to hear these sounds.
Yours,
Sharon Tzur
##### To send a message to the ETNI list email: etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx #####
##### Send queries and questions to: ask@xxxxxxxx #####
Other related posts: