New title from PronPack: Accent for Listeners! When it comes to receptive pronunciation (i.e. listening), the problem that nobody wants to talk about is accent. Because it’s too big and difficult. Not any more – this new book gives people working in ELT a simple overview of different accents in world Englishes, plus a simple syllabus and strategy to help raise learner awareness of this variation, so that they can become better, more flexible, listeners. Find an article about it here, and more information about the new book here.
Understanding spoken English is challenging. Learners often complain that the language they hear out in the real world is completely different from the English they heard in the classroom. All the rules of correct grammar and pronunciation seem to go out of the window. In the ELT community, this problem has been recognised. Nowadays, teachers often focus on those aspects of pronunciation which are known as connected speech – things like cutting some of the sounds, or blending them together. However, there is another aspect of spoken English which is relatively ignored, and that is accent. It is often assumed that learners should follow either a standard American or British model in their own spoken production, but little attention is given to the myriad accents they might encounter as listeners. Perhaps this topic is just too difficult to deal with, so we say little or nothing about it. It is ‘the elephant in the room’.
Let’s consider what it is about accent that makes it so difficult to deal with. I think there are three main issues: Firstly, the sheer variety of accents in English as a global language. Secondly, the complex technical terminology used in texts on the subject. And thirdly, the practical difficulty of finding material to deal with this in the classroom. I will focus on each of these issues in turn.
1 Sheer variety of accents of English
We sometimes talk as if there were only two accents – American or British, but in fact, as any visitor will have noticed, there are many accents in those countries. And it seems that the closer we look, the more we find. For example, we can identify a Northern English accent, but within that, we would find more, such as a Liverpool accent or a Hull accent. Then there are accents from other English-speaking countries such as Australia or Jamaica. Then there are accents of English from non-English-speaking countries such as China or France. Plus, there are blended forms, such as multicultural London accents. If we attempt to deal with all of the above in turn, we will have enough on the syllabus to occupy a very long course indeed!
The solution, I think, is this: instead of teaching learners all of the accents, we focus on individual pronunciation features which cut across all accents around the world. For example, one such feature would be the letter R (where there is no vowel after it) and whether or not it is pronounced. This feature-based approach could be supplemented by focussing on those few specific accents which are most likely to be encountered by our learners, on a need-to-know basis.
2 The complexity of terminology in describing accents
It is easy enough to hear that one accent is different from another. What is not so easy is to express that difference in words. This problem is particularly acute in the case of vowel sounds: how can we talk about these without specialist jargon and the use of the full phonetic alphabet (not just the phonemic charts which are familiar to many teachers)? I think it is possible to do this, provided we accept that our descriptions will not be as precise and scientific as those in academic texts. Instead of using phonetic symbols, we can use keywords (words representing vowel sounds in different accents), as has been effectively done by John Wells (Wells, 1982). We can also compare accents with one another using homophones. These may be words which sound identical in one accent but not in another, such as court and caught. Alternatively, they may be cross-language homophones – for example, mate in Accent A sounds exactly like might in Accent B.
3 Finding classroom materials
It is easy enough to find audio material in a range of different accents on the internet. What is not so easy is finding the same text in different accents. This is important, because only if we have the same text can we compare like with like. This is necessary if we want to focus on specific pronunciation features, as I suggested above. Fortunately, we can now turn to technology to help in this matter. We can paste short texts into online text-to-speech tools such as Elevenlabs, Natural Reader or Luvvoice, and have them read aloud by voices in a huge variety of accents, all generated by A.I. The quality is not always convincing in terms of intonation, but apart from that, specific pronunciation features found across different accents can be very clearly demonstrated. This is the strategy I have used in my book Accent for Listeners (Hancock, 2026).
In this article, I have explained why accent is important in language teaching. I have argued that like an elephant in the room, it is something which looms large, and yet nobody wants to talk about it because it is so difficult. Finally, I have suggested how the difficulty can be overcome by changing our strategy and by using technological support. Perhaps now we can stop ignoring the elephant!
Hancock, M. (2026), Accent for Listeners Hancock McDonald ELT
Annie has worked in ELT with great passion for the last 40 years, but her teaching career began even before that, in her home town of Liverpool. She qualified there as a teacher in 1976 and went on to teach history in secondary schools. Straight away, she understood the importance of motivation, and how to make the content of her classes relevant for learners, especially for those whose backgrounds were not exactly privileged and encouraging of learning. This desire to reach out to the learner, to teach the person rather than the course, endured throughout her career.
If Annie was a popular, well-loved teacher, it was because of her tireless effort to understand her learners, and put herself in their shoes. In fact, later on in her career, motivation was to become one of Annie’s particular interests – a topic about which she went on to write many articles and conference presentations. It was also a key aspect of a series of coursebooks that she and I wrote for Oxford University Press – English Result. In that book, each lesson was conceived as a journey from How to (the objective) to Can do (the outcome). Concern for motivation informed every step of this journey.
Annie’s belief in learner training and the motivating effect of ‘can do’ outcomes naturally lead her to take a great deal of interest in the work of the Council of Europe, and the Common European Framework of Reference. Few teachers could match Annie’s painstaking patience in matching classroom practice to the lists of competencies in the CEFR documents. Her determination to get it right was based on a passion for fairness, and this fed into her work on testing and assessment, which formed to bulk of her most recent work at the University of Chester. Annie was not one to give in to the temptations of an easy life, even when under pressure to do so. ‘Sticking with it’ was a key aspect of her professional personality; she could be trusted to do things properly.
Annie was always keen to push ahead with continuous professional development, constantly signing up for courses and conferences, and perhaps the biggest commitment of all: a Masters degree in Teaching English. This she did with Aston University, but at a distance, alongside a group of like-minded colleagues in Madrid. Among the special interests which emerged out of that course were English for Specific Purposes, Course and Syllabus Design, and Skills, especially writing and listening. With regard to this last item, Annie was convinced that there had to be a place for authentic audio material; so much of what passed for listening work at that time was based on artificial, ‘cleaned up’ audio material created by publishers based on scripted dialogue. Everything we learned at Aston about discourse and conversation analysis indicated that the challenge of listening is in the more unexpected, unnoticed aspects of speech; the kinds of things the script writers rarely included. This is what motivated Annie and I to embark on the project of writing a book of materials for authentic listening (Authentic Listening Resource Pack, from Delta Publishing).
Aside from pushing ahead with her own professional development, Annie was also committed to helping others do the same, and hence the hours and years she devoted to voluntary work for TESOL Spain. In her role as convention coordinator, she was able to give many ELT professionals their first opportunity to present at a major conference – perhaps you are one of them yourself? – and this is something many people have mentioned in their tributes upon learning of Annie’s death. Annie would later go on to become president of TESOL Spain (from 2000 to 2002), and then Liaison Officer and Honorary Advisor.
From what I have written above, readers may have the impression of a dedicated worker, very serious about her career, but that would be to miss another aspect of her professional presence: her lively and fun-loving character. This was well reflected in one of her earliest achievements in her ELT trajectory, namely her key role in instituting an annual pantomime and the Cultura Inglesa chain of language schools in Rio, Brazil. Like the carnival, planning for these events started almost immediately after the previous one had finished, and involved bringing together vast teams of willing volunteers in hours of work and often hilarious fun.
Now, Annie McDonald is no longer with us, but long may her memory live on amongst the many people in the world of English Language Teaching, whose trajectory has crossed with hers, in one way or another. She has enriched us all.
Sign up here to attend this free webinar on Zoom (March 9 2025, 16:00 UK time). You will receive a Zoom link 24 hours before. The event will be recorded, but participants attending person will receive a free PDF sample from ‘The Minimal Pair Collection’ plus participation in a raffle. Hurry – there are a limited number of places available!
New from PronPack: The Minimal Pair Collection! This new book takes an accent-friendly approach to teaching the segmentals of English pronunciation. You can download some free sample material from the book in the PDF below. There’s a first review of the book, by Clare Henderson, writing in Modern English Teacher (Vol 34 Issue 1). As she says, “Doing exactly what it says on the tin, this is an ‘accent-friendly approach to pronunciation’ (Hancock 2024:6). This is an approach that embraces accent variation, promotes tolerance and rightly makes the distinction between accent and intelligibility.”
Intelligibility does not depend on having a standard accent. In this presentation, (register here now!) I will suggest that it is possible to teach pronunciation in a way which is more flexible and accepting of different accents. The presentation will present practical teaching ideas (including ‘Pair Squares’, which can be downloaded here) , while at the same time introducing four principles for accent-friendly pronunciation teaching: 1 ‘Effective’ beats ‘correct’ 2 If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it 3 Make the difference you need 4 Speak locally, hear globally
I have made 50 of these Pair Squares (minimal pairs, squared) to accompany The Minimal Pairs Collection, for different phoneme contrasts in English (download the PDFs in two files below!). One person says one of the phrases, the others have to identify which one they think they heard. There are some which are really important for learners to master, both receptively and productively, in order to understand and be understood. There are others which show accent alternatives, both of which are equally valid, and these are more for building learner awareness of different varieties of English (see here for details of a webinar connected to this resource).
The images in this collection of pair squares have been generated by AI. Little by little, I’m becoming aware of the environmental impact of this kind of data-heavy technology usage. In order for these pictures to perhaps justify the ‘cost’ of their generation, I hope their benefit (if any) will be spread as widely as possible. I would therefore like to make them freely available to as many ELT teachers as can be reached. If you’re interested, please download them from here: (and if you like them, spread the word!).
For many teachers, the very heart of pronunciation is the set of individual sounds in the target language. Yes, there is stress, intonation and connected speech too, but sounds feel more basic. However, they are also frustratingly difficult to deal with in class, and hard to integrate with other topics in the lesson. They can also leave the teacher feeling dis-empowered, especially teachers whose own accent is not like standard accents often presented in text books. It’s easy to see why this aspect of pronunciation is often neglected in the language class. In what follows, I would like to outline in a bit more detail three kinds of problems teachers have with individual phonemes, and then go on to suggest some practical solutions to these problems.
PROBLEMS
1 Accent issues
Accent issues play a part in discouraging teachers from dealing with individual sounds in class. Sometimes, pronunciation sections in books seem to assume all learners need to master RP (Received Pronunciation: a standard British accent) or GA (General American). This is particularly noticeable with vowel sounds. For example, your text book might present the ‘correct’ pronunciation for bath as having the long A sound (like art), implying that the short A sound (like cat) is wrong for this word. If the goal of the class is intelligibility, then this kind of accent-bias is totally unnecessary – the short A sound would be perfectly intelligible. Perceived accent-bias in pronunciation materials can also be very alienating for teachers whose own accent is non-standard.
2 Mixed needs
Another problem with teaching individual sounds is relevance to the learners’ needs. One student may find a particular sound difficult while the next has no problem with it at all. This problem is especially acute in classes with mixed first languages. If you teach the distinction between /r/ and /l/ for your Japanese learners, it will be irrelevant for their European classmates. Even if all your class share the same mother tongue, your coursebook may not provide material on their specific L1 issues, since such materials are often intended for a wider market than just one country. To provide targeted pronunciation activities, you will probably need to step away from the coursebook and source your material elsewhere.
3 Unconnected fragments
Sounds are difficult to fit into the storyline of a lesson. Many teachers like lessons to have a good sense of flow, some kind of narrative linking one part of the lesson to the next. But whatever your class is about, it’s unlikely to create an obvious need for a section on ship and sheep. That’s because there is no direct connection between phonemes and meaningful units of language like words and sentences. Topics rarely contain a large number of words featuring any particular sound. If you want to focus on a sound in class, it will usually have to be in a small, separate chunk of the lesson with no strong connection to the rest of it. This makes teaching segmental aspects of pronunciation feel bitty – a collection of random fragments.
SUGGESTIONS
1 Use minimal pairs
I’m going to suggest that taking a minimal pair approach to teaching pronunciation goes a long way to answering the accent issues problem. But first of all, I should make one assumption clear. I assume that for most pronunciation teachers around the world, our job is to help learners understand and be understood. In other words, the goal is intelligibility rather than training them to sound like a native. This is important, because you can be intelligible without sounding like a native.
What are the implications of this assumption? Well, it means that learners do not have to acquire sounds which are exactly the same as the standard model. For example, the vowel in the word gate does not have to be identical to the RP or GA diphthong. What’s important is that it should be different from other phonemes, for example, the vowel in get.
This is the strength of minimal pair activities: they switch the focus away from the individual sound and onto the contrast between a phoneme pair, such as gate-get. The basic message is this: it doesn’t matter what accent you have, as long as you can make the important contrasts. This message is so different from implying that learners must sound like the queen (or any other idealized native speaker). You can sound like yourself.
2 Put minimal pairs in groups
A good way to make your pronunciation lesson relevant to a mixed group of learners is to focus on a set of related pairs rather than a single pair. Take for example the set of words beat, bait, bite, bit, bet, bat. We could call this a minimal group. Within this group, there are a range of different challenges. Some learners may find it difficult to distinguish beat-bit; others may have no problem with this, but instead have a problem with bait-bet, or with bet-bat. By focusing on a minimal group, hopefully, there’s something for everybody.
For all the learners, even those who have no specific problem with any of the pairings, there is also the benefit of seeing how these vowel phonemes work together as a system, allowing them to be compared and contrasted. This connects the individual minimal pairs to the bigger picture, making the pronunciation segment of your class seem less fragmented, or bitty. This goes some way to offering a solution to problem 3 above: although it doesn’t help to integrate your pronunciation section to the topic of the rest of the lesson, it does make it more weighty chunk in its own right. You could also introduce some kind of phoneme syllabus, having a different phoneme group at regular intervals. Here is a suggestion of some groups you could cover (Hancock 2024):
Consonants
– The P group (lip consonants): pea, bee, fee, V, we
– The T group (tongue and gum consonants): tear, deer, cheer, jeer, year
– The S group (sibilants): sip, zip, ship, vision
– The K group (palate and throat consonants): cold, gold, hold, old
– The TH group (teeth consonants): thin, tin, fin, sin, then, den, Venn, zen
– The L group (liquids): light, right, night
– The N group (nose consonants): sun, sum, sung, sunk
Vowels
– The E group (front vowels): beat, bait, bite, bit, bet, bat
– The A group (open vowels): caught, coat, cot, cat, cut
– The U group (rounded vowels): foul, foal, fool, full, gull
– The R vowel group (vowels before ‘r’): steer, stair, star, store, stir
Accent is a problem in ELT, particularly in pronunciation
teaching. In the real world, accents are diverse, and yet we often seem to
teach as if only one or two of them are valid. Why is that, and is there any
way to make pronunciation teaching more accent-friendly? In this short article,
we explore those questions, and I’ll suggest that the answer may be to set a
good example.
You have an accent
You sometimes hear people say things like, ‘I don’t have an accent’. On the one hand, this seems like nonsense – like saying, ‘I don’t have an appearance’. On the other hand, I guess we know what they mean. They mean that they have a way of speaking which is felt to be ‘normal’ or ‘neutral’, not marked as being strongly regional or foreign. But whatever that is, it’s an accent too. If you speak a language, you have an accent. Alene Moyer writes, ‘In any language – native or not – everyone has an accent, yet the idea of a neutral accent standard persists in our collective consciousness’ (Moyer, 2013 p.89).
Accent reduction and elocution lessons
The idea of a neutral accent is exploited by courses which
offer ‘accent reduction’. If we accept Moyer’s claim, then these courses could
be better described as ‘accent training’, not so much losing an accent as
replacing it with another – one which is more acceptable in the community where
you are living. These kinds of courses are popular nowadays with immigrants in North America, but the idea is not new. They are like
‘elocution lessons’, which were popular in the past in the UK. These were in effect accent
training for native speakers, with an emphasis on social climbing: learning to
speak your own language in a way which is more acceptable in more upper class
circles. In this context, the model accent was ‘Received Pronunciation’ (RP),
the word ‘received’ here is being used as a synonym for ‘accepted’. RP is an
accent of English which is regarded as standard in the UK and
elsewhere, but there is a strong evaluative element here too: the idea that
this accent is not only ‘standard’ but a ‘higher standard’ than others.
‘Standard’ does not mean ‘better’
Pronunciation classes often set up a model for learners to
aim at. This model is a native accent, and more specifically, a ‘standard’
native accent – RP or GA (General American). But it’s important to understand
that being ‘standard’ does not mean
those accents are somehow better than other accents. John Wells points out, ‘A
standard accent is regarded as a standard not because of any intrinsic
qualities it may possess, but because of an arbitrary attitude adopted towards
it by society’ (Wells, 1982 p34).
In the world today, English is an international language, with many more non-native than native speakers. If you want to understand and be understood by as many of those people as possible, having an RP or GA accent is no guarantee. As Wells says, those accents are not intrinsically superior – they are not, for example, more intelligible. Their usage as models is essentially random, relating more to local prejudices within the UK and US than to anything else.
Pronunciation teaching goals
Robin Walker and Gemma Archer outline two alternative pronunciation goals for learners of English – a. a native speaker accent, or b. comfortable intelligibility (Walker & Archer 2024). A native speaker accent was the goal of pronunciation teaching before the 1980s. The model chosen was overwhelmingly either RP, or GA.
The focus on comfortable intelligibility emerged when
communicative approaches became more fashionable, with the idea was that we
should help learners to understand and be understood. Speakers can be
intelligible without necessarily speaking RP or GA.
Of course, the native speaker accent goal still exists
alongside the comfortable intelligibility goal. Although the majority of
learners around the world mainly need to be intelligible, some specifically
want or need to sound like native speakers. To keep the two goals clear and
separate, I think we could refer to them using different terms: accent
training aims at a native speaker accent goal while pronunciation
teaching aims at comfortable intelligibility.
Models or examples?
I’ve suggested that we keep pronunciation teaching separate
from accent training, but in practice, the boundary between these two is very
often blurred. A lot of teachers teach pronunciation as if they are doing
accent training, correcting perfectly intelligible speech simply because it is
not native-like. I think a part of the reason for this is to do with an
insistence on models.
The strongest argument often given in favour of standard
models (such as RP or GA) is that we need a fixed target to aim at, and why not
choose one which is widely accepted? If anybody suggests abandoning a standard
model, people ask, ‘But what can we replace it with?’ It’s a tough question,
because no suggested replacement comes without problems. Yes, it’s a tough
question, but maybe it’s not a question that needs an answer. Let me suggest
that if we want to develop an accent-friendly approach to pronunciation
teaching, perhaps we don’t need to attach so much importance to the question of
models in the first place. Instead of models, we simply offer examples –
starting with ourselves, and whatever accent we have as teachers.
Teaching by example
Let’s say standard accents such as RP, our own accents, and
all other intelligible accents of English are all examples of successful
English pronunciation. Any of them can serve as a model; none of them
has to be the model. In talking about them this way there is no
evaluative judgement going on; no assumption that one accent is superior to
another.
We don’t need to protect learners from the reality of accent
variation. As listeners, learners will inevitably encounter many different
accents, not only the standard ones. Equally inevitably, as speakers, most
learners will end up with accents different from the standards, and this is not
a shameful fact we should hide away from them.
Nor do we need to create accent anxiety among teachers by
implying that we should all have standard accents. If you are an intelligible
speaker of English, you are a good example for your learners, whatever your
accent.
Walker,
R & Archer, G. (2024) Teaching English Pronunciation for a Global World Oxford: Oxford
University Press
Moyer, A. (2013) Foreign Accent: the Phenomenon of Non-Native Speech Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Wells, JC (1982) Accents of English 1: An Introduction Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Wells, JC (1982) Accents of English 1: An Introduction Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
(First published in IATEFL Conference Selections 2023; this article is a written summary of the conference presentation)
Unlike the written word, the spoken word is different every
time you hear it – think of all the different voices and accents in the world.
How do listeners ever recognise these various versions as being the same word? This
crucial aspect of the listening skill is known as ‘spoken word recognition’. In
this presentation, we look at some of the difficulties involved in this, and
some of the things we can do in the language class. The analysis is divided
into four parts, which I call spelling, storing, priming
and processing.
Spelling
According to John Field, the written forms of words tend to
stick in the memory more strongly than the spoken forms. Unfortunately, in
English, the written form is often misleading and often leads to
mispronunciation. For example, many learners pronounce ‘comfortable’ like ‘come
for table’.
But what about the consequences for listening? The problem
is this: if the learner expects words to sound like their written form,
they may not recognise them in speech. We should bear this in mind when
teaching. Encourage learners to make some kind of note of words which are
pronounced very differently from their spelling. If possible, give them
guidance about spelling rules. For example, make sure they are aware of vowel
reduction: the letter ‘a’ in ‘comfortable’ is not the same as in
‘table’!
Storing
When we hear a word, we compare it to words which are stored
in our memory and look for a match. However, words don’t have only one form.
John Field gives the example of ‘actually’. If you’re speaking really
carefully, this may have four syllables, but said quickly it may come out as
only two, like ‘ashley’. Field proposes that instead of having storing a single
form of a word, the listener stores multiple versions (or ‘exemplars’) of it. To
help learners build up their repertoire of stored exemplars of a word, we need
to expose them to more variety. We can assemble multiple examples of the same
word in different contexts, and for this purpose, the online tool called ‘Youglish’
is very useful. It’s like a search engine of video material, and you type in
the word (or phrase) you want to hear, and it gives you thousands of examples
in different voices, accents and speeds. In order to give learners a sense of
how the spoken form of words like this vary, we can use YouGlish in class like
this, or else encourage them to make regular use of it at home.
Priming
Listeners do not hear neutrally. We are primed to pay
attention to features which are important in our language, while ignoring
features which are not. For example, if word stress is important in your first
language, you tend to notice it; if it is not, then you tend to be what Anne
Cutler calls ‘stress deaf’. With our learners, we somehow need to prime them to
pay attention to features which may not be common in their L1, but which are
common in English. One approach is to use texts which have a high density of
certain common patterns in English such as word endings. For example, I have
designed this rhyme to draw attention to the ending ‘able/ible’:
They’re comfortable and durable
They’re lovable, adorable
Fashionable but sensible
To me they’re indispensable
You can make short texts with lots of examples for yourself.
Try using Chat GPT: Instruct it to write a brief text containing… and then give
a list of words with the suffix you want to focus on.
Processing
Listeners have to process what they’re hearing in real time.
According to John Field, ‘listeners may need to form tentative matches on the
basis of the available evidence and to confirm or change them as they hear more
and more of the utterance’. In the examples below, after hearing the first part
of a sentence, the listener understands a, but then after hearing the ending,
they must change their interpretation to b:
a. It’s a fish… b. It’s official.
a. Pay a ten… b. Pay attention.
a. It’s a nun… b. It’s an onion.
Expert listeners do this all the time; learners on the other
hand tend to stick with the first interpretation, no matter how bizarre. We can
use dictations like the examples above in class to raise awareness of this.
Read out ‘a’ first and ask learners to write what they hear. Then read out ‘b’
and ask them to correct and complete what they wrote.
References
Cutler, A. (2012). Native
Listening : Language Experience and the Recognition of Spoken Words
MIT Press
Field, J. (2008). Listening in the Language Classroom.
Cambridge University Press
