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<p>Published as part of my final assignment for LING 102, Spring 2022, University of Rochester.</p>

International Students in the US and their Accents (Short version)

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Many international students that come to the US for university studies face similar problems. Some of the most common one’s are cultural shock, adjusting to the academic environment, and language barriers. Although many come with existing knowledge of the English language, they still face issues due to their english accent which often doesn’t match the american standard accent. National speakers are used to a pronunciation norm which makes other foriegn accents sound wrong to them. Pronunciation norm refers to the collective judgment of native speakers concerning how a sound should be pronounced. [3] As you may expect, these judgmental thoughts results in further implications to the biases international speakers may face. In fact, a study conducted by Wang et al.  in 2018, on communication between international and local students in the US, concluded that international students with mild foriegn accents were perceived as more intelligent than students with thicker foriegn accents by national students. [4] Another research conducted in 2016 showed that speaking with a non-native accent is linked to career possibilities and progression, because their performance abilities are being related to their fluency in speech. [5]  In this podcast I will further discuss some of the findings from the research I’ve conducted to learn more about how fellow international students percieved their accents. I interviewed 9 students in total. The sample population I chose to interview was international college undergraduate students studying in the US. Some of the things they had in common were that they all spoke 2-4 languages, and were in the age group of 18-22 years old. Moreover, none were raised in the US, they were raised in either Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, South Sudan, Swaziland, or Uganda. I will be talking about 6 main points in my essay, which are: What the interviewees seemed to think of the word “accent”. How they reacted differently when asked about their English, then their native language. How many depended on western media to learn English. The common idea that the American standard accent is the correct way to talk.  What made them think that they had an accent. What they thought influenced them to have an accent.  1. The misconception of “accents” [The first point I will be talking about is the misconception of accents] Generally, I found that the word “accent” always had a negative connotation to it. It seemed like a common misconception of it was that it was a degree of talking in a different or wrong way than how a language should be spoken. I’m thinking this way because many interviewees mentioned that when they talk with an accent, they aren’t pronouncing the words correctly. But I have conversations with most of them regularly and they all sound like fluent English speakers to me. It’s just that not all of them speak with a standard American accent. One interviewee has also related having an accent with stuttering.  In Wolfram and Schilling-Estes’s (2006) chapter on Dialects, Standards and Vernaculars [1], they define dialects to be “any variety of a language that is shared by a group of speakers”. And as mentioned by Van Hert (2018) in “What is Sociolinguistics” [2] the difference between a dialect and an accent is that dialects include a difference in grammar and vocabulary, while accents are just a differentiation in pronunciation. Based on these definitions, accents aren’t necessarily just associated with the region, instead, they can be associated with any group of people or even an individual. But a common misconception I’ve seen is that many people think that accents are only based on regions. One interviewee even mentioned that they thought they didn’t have an accent because they couldn’t relate to the way they speak with any group of people. But the fact is, this means that they may have their own unique accent. Another interviewee described having an accent as how your speech gives people an idea of where you originated from. So if your accent is less popular, people would notice it more and guess that you are not from the area, and maybe even tell where you came from. It is true that accents help represent part of your identity, but even if you speak in a standard way that doesn’t allow people to indicate where you are from, is still considered an accent. And even if it doesn’t tell people about the place you originate from, it may still represent your identity in a different way such as the economical, educational, or social status you grew up with.  2.English vs. Native accents [The second point I will talk about is how the interviewees talked about their English accents vs. their native accents]  None of the interviewees spoke English as their native language. When asked whether or not they had an accent when speaking in their native language, most interviewees answered no. When asked about why they thought so, one interviewee mentioned that there isn’t really a variety of accents in their language (siSwati, one of the national languages spoken in Swaziland or also known as Eswatini). Another interviewee said that they speak the standard version of their language (Bengali, the national language in Bangladesh), which is the same one spoken on news reports and in formal events. A few others mentioned that it was their native language so they couldn’t have an accent speaking it. But some interviewees did mention that they have an accent in their own language, in fact (and this might just be a coincidence) but they were the same people that mentioned that they don’t have an accent when speaking in English.  After this first round of interviews, I wondered, if I had asked my interviewees whether or not they have an accent in their native language first before talking about English, would their answers be different? I say this because I got a sense that some may have said that they have no accents in their native language to appear as if they know how to speak their own language and that the way they speak isn’t wrong. This again goes back to the point of people having the wrong idea of what the meaning of accents really is.  So I decided to conduct a second round of interviews, and ask people only these two questions this time. I asked them whether they thought they have an accent in their native language first, then ask them if they thought they had an accent when speaking English. I interviewed 9 international students as well for this interview round, and the variety of answers I got was very similar to the first. So I cannot conclude that the order of questions influenced the interviewee's answers.  One thing I concluded though, is that usually if people speak the dominant or popular accent in a region which is usually spoken in the capital of a country or big cities, they say that don’t have an accent. But if they speak a less common variation, they refer to it as having an accent.    3. Depending on the media to learn English [The thrid point I will talk about is how international students depend on the media to learn english] Five out of my nine interviewees have mentioned in some way that they depend on western media (including TV shows, movies, YouTube, and video games) to learn the correct way to speak English. Some said that media was the way they taught themselves English. A few others mentioned that they consider what they hear in them as the standard English they should speak, and would compare their way of speaking to it.  Unfortunately, the media doesn’t have a wide representation of English accents or dialects. Which gets people (both domestic and international) to think that there's just one correct standard way of talking and that this way of speech has no accent. This isn’t correct, because I believe there is no such thing as not having an accent. Everyone has an accent, it's just that when we get used to hearing things being spoken in a certain way, we think this is correct, and all other ways are wrong. I believe that most misconceptions that I’ve mentioned earlier have been strongly influenced by the media. Because that is the main way international people get to know more about the US, and how people here speak. 4. The “American” accent is the correct way to talk.  [The fourth point I will talk about, is the common ideoligy that the “American” accent is the correct way to talk.] As mentioned before, many international students have been taught English through American resources which were mostly movies, video games, and other forms of media. This is what generated the dominant thought that the standard American accent is the correct way to speak English. In fact, the interviewees who speak a more standard American accent would mention that they don’t have an accent, or have an accent that is “not heavy”. Moreover, one interviewee mentioned that they’ve been praised for having an American accent. There shouldn’t be a measurement of how correct or wrong an accent is, because there’s no such thing. An accent is just a different way that someone pronounces words. Accents can be compared by being similar or different, but not right or wrong.  5. “Why do you have an accent?” [For my fifth point, I will discuss some of the interesting notes I had from asking my interviewees the following question, “Why do you think you have an accent?”]  There were a few common ideas when the interviewees were asked why they thought they had an accent. Some answers included not sounding like what they hear on TV or the radio. Another common answer was that they were commonly asked to repeat themselves multiple times, and then be “corrected” to the word they were saying. A few also had people point out to them that they have an accent, and the people who pointed that out included both standard American accent speakers and non-American accent speakers. Some interviewees find it hard to pronounce some sounds or syllables “perfectly”. Such as the American “t” in the middle of the word. Which a few have mentioned as the thing that sets their accent apart from American speakers. Such as pronouncing the number [30] as “thir-T-y” instead of the more American way which is “thir-d-y”. One interviewee has even mentioned that they used to think of the hard “t” as the wrong pronunciation, and so they “improved” their pronunciation to match the American version.  6. “What influences your accent?” [For my sixth point, I will discuss some of  my conclusions from asking my interviewees about what they thought influenced their accents?]  When asked about what they thought gives them an accent, there were several answers that I thought were interesting. An interviewee mentioned that it’s because of their surroundings such as the people around them, the place they grow up, and the school they went to. Another interviewee mentioned the lack of conversations with native English speakers, being taught by non-native English speakers, and how their pronunciation flaws were not pointed out to them. Although, those who had native English-speaking teachers, mentioned that they didn’t have a big impact on how they spoke and that the bigger effect came from the media. And, only 1 out of 3 of those who mentioned that they don’t have an accent or one that is very light, had American teachers. So based on my sample population, I don’t think having a teacher who has a standard American accent highly affects how people get their accent. I think that makes sense because, in the end, these teachers are most likely not going to spend more than 1.5 hours with you per day. So I don’t think they’ll have a great impact on the accent we catch (unless maybe if they are the only resources that you hear English from which is highly unlikely). Although, based on what I just mentioned, one could conclude that the media can highly influence our accents. But if that is so, why don’t all who learn English through the media have a standard American accent? So there must be additional factors than the resources we learn from that affect our accents.  An interviewee (whose native language is Cantonese) mentioned that they thought their accent was affected due to the tongue positions they’re used to. They may find a hard time putting their tongue in a specific way to pronounce the words in an American standard way. This results in a different pronunciation of some words. Unfortunately, since it’s different than the American pronunciation, they are set to believe that their pronunciation is wrong, which is not true. Pronouncing words in a different accent than the more common way doesn’t mean that one's pronunciation is wrong.   To conclude, it saddens me that international speakers are set to believe that they don’t speak correctly just because they have a different accent than standard American speakers. I believe that as long as one is understood when speaking in a language, that’s all they need to consider their pronunciation as correct. Moreover, it is already amazing that many international students only started learning English after they grew up a bit and not since birth. This in itself is proof that they are intelligent enough, and that they shouldn’t be set to think any less of their selves if they don’t speak with a standard American accent.  If there are any current listeners that speak a standard American accent, I would urge you to be more considerate when talking with people who have a different accent than the one you are used to. And try your best to raise awareness on this topic so we could help prevent any biases that may occur as a result of accent bias. There are many ways to do so. First and foremost, acknowledging these conscious or unconscious biases is the first step to solving them. Some ways to do this include trying your best to be non-judgmental when speaking to people with a foreign accent to you. And if you feel like you’re not quite understanding what they’re saying, simply ask them to slow down or ask for clarification. That can be done by rephrasing what the speaker said to confirm if your understanding matches what they are saying. In fact, a report by M. J. Munro and T. M. Derwing mentioned that comprehension in a conversation doesn’t only depend on the speaker, but the listener also has an important role in putting in the effort to understand what the speaker is saying. It’s not a one way effort, instead it it mutual. [6] It also helps to be more open to meet new people from different backgrounds, which will increase your multilingual sensitivity, and hopefully help reduce existing ethnolinguistic notion and accent hierarchies. [7] Thank you for listening, and I would love to hear any experience you’ve been through, or thoughts that you have on this topic in the comments below.   Resources: Wolfram, Walt and Natalie Schilling-Estes. 2006. American English (2nd Ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell, pp. 2-27. Van Herk, Gerard. What Is Sociolinguistics? / Gerard Van Herk. Second edition. Hoboken, New Jersey ; Wiley Blackwell, 2018. Print. Flege, J. E. (1988). The production and perception of foreign language speech sounds. In H. Winitz (Ed.), Human communication and its disorders, pp. 224–401. Ablex. Wang, I.-C., J. N. Ahn, H. J. Kim, and X. Lin-Siegler. “Why Do International Students Avoid Communicating With Americans?”. Journal of International Students, vol. 7, no. 3, July 2018, pp. 555-82, doi:10.32674/jis.v7i3.288. Russo, Marcello, et al. “Non-Native Accents and Stigma: How Self-Fulfilling Prophesies Can Affect Career Outcomes.” Human Resource Management Review, vol. 27, no. 3, 2017, pp. 507–520., https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2016.12.001.  Munro, Murray J., and Tracey M. Derwing. “Foreign Accent, Comprehensibility, and Intelligibility in the Speech of Second Language Learners.” Language Learning, vol. 49, 1999, pp. 285–310., https://doi.org/10.1111/0023-8333.49.s1.8.  Agarwal, Dr. Pragya. “Accent Bias: How Can We Minimize Discrimination in the Workplace?” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 10 Dec. 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/pragyaagarwaleurope/2018/12/30/bias-is-your-accent-holding-you-back/?sh=3b3c0ee81b5a.