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Should children be taught to speak with good diction?
SirMickTravis
Posts: 2,607 Forum Member
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Controversial issue but one I have considered before. There's a story that Steven Gerrard's LA teammates make sure to listen to him very closely because they struggle with the Scouse accent. We have an economy in which more people work in services, including call centres, when the way someone speaks clearly matters. We also have more elderly people and that means hearing difficulties. I get the feeling parents care about how their children talk but schools don't seem to worry about it.
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Yuh git me bruh.
I hate that! you're white, you've lived here your entire life so why do you sound like a Yardie?
I believe children should be taught proper diction and that should be easily understood regardless of dialect.
However my daughter has a lisp and people correct her all the time, I don't think its their place to as she speaks better than some of them
Good diction and good spelling are equally importent.
Surely diction and accent is different?
Surely dialects are better understood if someone has good diction?
I agree. If we want children to grow up with as many doors open to them as possible and to have equal access to all opportunities they need to have good diction in standard English. That is not to say they should be discouraged from acquiring and using a local accent or dialect with friends, family, in informal situations etc, they just need to be able to switch registers when the circumstances require it.
The ability for the general public beyond your own locality to understand you is critical to so many jobs. So the inability to communicate well in a widely recognised register creates an access problem akin to a physical disability.
I love that we have local varieties of English and for me these too are to be encouraged but not at the expense of being able and willing to communicate in a widely understood form of the language when the need arises.
Oh purrrleae!!
Where do you get this idea from? Link?
Of course schools care about how children speak just like they care about so much which is the responsibility of parents.
I get ya bruv. Dem kidz need to speak better Innit.
After becoming disabled people always assumed she was trying to be posh and using her 'telephone' voice. Obviously not realising her 'telephone' voice has become her standard voice thanks to her job.
She was a scouser btw and the amount of people I heard in my lifetime tell her to stop trying to be posh was pathetic.
Speaking properly around here is obviously not seen as a good thing.
However, as has already been said, good diction and a local/regional accent are two very different things.
I have a Gloucestershire/West country accent and yet, as I work for a multi-national company, I speak to people all over the world for whom English is a second language and I have never had any problem being understood, and I have never changed my accent.
Completely agree.
An accent doesn't preclude good diction and the ability to communicate with everyone. If it does then it's something that the person can move between (broad and universally understandable).
There shouldn't be but everyone knows that a really strong accent can hold you back in certain professions. I heard somebody on the radio a while back saying how he'd worked hard to lose his strong Birmingham accent because he knew he sounded unintelligent and people took the mickey out of him about it.
Probably not if you intend to live where you are, your chances of getting a well paid job in the south will be negligible however. Dreadful Laandaarn accents are OK though. Don't get me started on the girls who pronounce "book" as "buerk".
It always puzzles me how many people seem to think that 'firty fousand pounds', 'free mumfs' and the like is acceptable pronunciation. If schools are playing their part, how do so many people slip through the net with these horrors?
I went to a grammar school in Liverpool, and I thank the gods of education every day that we had elocution lessons.
I remember when my son a tot, I used to try to make sure he put his 'g' on the end of 'ing'. Bless him, one day he asked me for 'chicking'.
It could be argued that the rural Welsh accent has very sharp diction with emphatic consonants and pure vowel sounds.... but I hardly think it would be acceptable to the OP who, I suspect, wants everyone to be taught RP through elocution lessons.
As teachers we can try and, often, the kids will remember when they are in class but revert to 'monffs' etc when out of the room.
I'm from Liverpool too and my mother-Irish-hated the Liverpool accent because it represented slovenly speech. We were taught to speak properly so that, now, I speak with a Liverpool accent but with clear diction. I am very proud of my Liverpool roots and would never try to lose my accent.