ON THE ACCENT SAGA

There's a growing trend in private schools in Nigeria. The goal is to make learners speak in a certain kind of way. I'm all for good pronunciation and enunciation of words and they're few things I like better than listening to learners speak fluently. However, the focus seems to be on making them sound a certain way and effort is made to make them lose what we tag their 'accents'. While this is not bad in and of itself, I think we should let this learners embrace who they are. The way we speak is strongly connected to our identity and when we make learners speak a certain way, they take on another identity, they become someone else. I am more polite when speaking my native language because I usually have to pay particular attention to body language, tone and other paralinguistic elements. For other people, such as individuals who are not very literate, they are more polite when they have to speak in English because they do not have a full grasp of the language and as such do not want to make mistakes.Learning a prestige accent is not bad, in fact I recommend it to those who plan to travel outside the country or work in close quarters with those who wouldn't understand them otherwise. I also follow a few Vlogs and Podcasts of a prestige accent myself but that's purely for the purpose of recreation.I've seen schools invest heavily in programs that promise to make learners sound like native speakers of English in three months or less. I've even seen a poster for an accent reduction course. Why would we want to totally eradicate our accent and then go on to pay to adopt another accent? For learners who have trouble pronouncing particular letters, there are strategies that can be adopted to improve that and so long as it doesn't interfere with intelligibility of speech, I'm all for letting learners express themselves without the fear of being criticized or mocked. I have a child who has rhotacism. She can't pronounce the letter R and it's quite ironic since her name starts with that letter. I want her to be able to pronounce the letter correctly and I'm actively looking for ways to help her overcome it. This is partly due to the fact that I believe she would feel better for it.A lot of learners are self-conscious about these things and it is our duty as educators to lower their affective filter by allowing them practice with speaking as much as they can in the target language to aid fluency. In summary, my view is that the focus should be on teaching learners good pronunciation, enunciation and fluency in whatever 'accent' they speak in