Modern language teaching has undergone numerous transformations in view of the zooming pace of technology growth and the shift in perspectives on the learning process organization. Social media and the variety of digital tools available assist in enhancing the quality of a language being learnt and facilitate the process of achieving language goals when used correctly.

In this paper, we aim to share our conclusions drawn from teaching a course on modern English pronunciation, including the achievements and challenges we were faced with, both on the teacher and student side of the process. Moreover, we present a number of digital means that proved to be effective in accent detection and acquisition.

The accent course in question was targeted at creating a holistic picture in the minds of the students as to what the term ‘Englishes of the World’ (Kachru, 1985) constitutes and how it is used as an umbrella term for the varieties of English spoken around the world. Following Braj B. Kachru’s model of grouping Englishes into concentric circles (an Inner Circle – with countries where English is spoken natively; the Outer Circle – with those in which English is important for historical reasons or functions as a second language; and the Expanding Circle – with countries in which English is not governmentally acknowledged as a second language, but has the status of a popular foreign language), we concentrated on introducing the accent variety of the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and Australia to the students.

A factor to be taken into consideration as a prerequisite for enrolling in the course was the level of linguistic competence of the students and their interest in accent studies in general. Being a follow-up course on teaching phonetics for English-major students of the first year at the Department of Foreign Languages, the course’s specific goals were to enumerate the typical distinctive features of English accents outside the traditionally taught Received Pronunciation (RP) and General American (GenAm) paradigm often familiar to language students from textbooks of school education.

To thoroughly grasp the idea of accent merger and bordering from region to region of the UK, US, Canada and Australia, the students were presented with a short historical report of how English turned from being the language of conquerors and enslavers to becoming a pidgin/creole or the mother tongue further on.

The results of the course demonstrated some interesting tendencies, of both predictable and unexpected nature. While the practical part in general evoked more interest in the students, the theoretical one led the participants to get disconnected from the material to a certain extent both literally and figuratively. We believe that the technical aspect of participation in the class was among the major hindering factors to greater mastering the material. Under the circumstances of conducting university classes online, the instability of Internet connection accounts for a percentage of misheard and misinterpreted accent features when at the discussion and drilling stages.

Moreover, another trend could be traced in how comprehensible and acceptable the students considered a certain regional English accent through the proportion of timely submitted assignments and their correctness. The table below demonstrates some figures on the comprehensibility of the two main English accents on the dialect and accent map of world Englishes – Received Pronunciation (RP) and General American English (GenAm).

Table 1

Student accent acquisition figures

Accent

Submission total

A-graded percentage

B-D-graded percentage

Failed and unsubmitted

assignments

RP

68,57%

41,67%

45,83%

12,5%

GenAm

62,85%

22,85%

40%

34,28%

Although the percentage of submissions is approximately the same, the performance tends to differ quite considerably in favour of the RP, which is the originally familiar accent for most English learners.

On the way to accent comprehension and drilling, we resorted to a range of online platforms and websites to receive first-hand experience from native speakers of an accent in question when focusing on a particular English-speaking region of the British Isles, North America or Australia. In doing so, we did not omit researching major groundbreaking works on accent varieties (Ash, Boberg & Labov, 2005; Wells, 1982; Wolfram & Schilling, 2015).

The most useful online resources in terms of accent comparison and comprehension proved to be IDEA (The International Dialects of English Archive) (IDEA, n.d.), which contains samples of voice recordings of English language accents and dialects from around the world. The recordings are sorted according to the region the readers live in and in most cases they provide their reading of the same text as many others from their cluster. The age, place of birth, gender, occupation, education and other influences on speech are stated, which in certain cases accounts for certain distinctive features in the speaker’s accent different from the other representatives.

On the stage of the code switching practice phase of the course, the YouGlish (YouGlish, n.d.) resource proved useful. It provides users with an opportunity to hear a word or short phrase typed in the search bar pronounced in three major English regional accents (British, American, Australian). The search mechanism suggests a video clip with the vocabulary unit in question. The disadvantage of the resource, yet, is the limited number of entries available on the non-membership basis.

YouTube has supplied a bulk of video materials of accent training, ranging from random speakers being interviewed in the street to academics and accent coaches structurally presenting accent features. It should be noted, though, that although various and plentiful in number, the video material from YouTube is lacking in uniformity to rely on heavily for conducting classes.

The conclusions to be drawn from teaching the course are as follows: 1) a lack of language exposure of students to world Englishes and structural knowledge of accent feature set-up leads to a more complicated process of accent drilling and code switching; 2) when broken down to detailed sound description and articulation and paired with close teacher supervision, code switching between major English accents of the Inner Circle appears attainable for the greater part of the enrolled students, as long as backed up with substantial individual practice; 3) equipped with the accent knowledge, a student may prioritize English accents for their educational and other activities and code-switch, which leads to higher speech clarity and better perception from the receiving party of interaction.

References

Ash, Sh., Boberg, Ch., & Labov, W. (2005). Atlas of North American English: Phonetics, Phonology and Sound Change. Mourton de Gruyter.

Kachru, Braj B. (1985). Standards, Codification and Sociolinguistic Realism: The English Language in the Outer Circle. In R. Quirk & H. G. Widdowson (Eds.) English in the World: Teaching and Learning the Language and Literatures. (pp. 11-30). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

The International Dialects of English Archive (IDEA). (n.d.) Retrieved from https://www.dialectsarchive.com/england?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Wells, J. C. (1982). Accents of English. The British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wolfram, W., & Schilling, N. (2015). American English: Dialects and Variation. Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, John. Retrieved from: https://books.google.com.ua/books?id=qa4dFqi6iMC&printsec=frontcover&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false