Does pronunciation matters?

Most Korean learners prefer modeling than teaching in learning English. The Korean preference of the North American Accent (NAE) is there. Not that they would really want to study with American teachers, otherwise they will not come to the Philippines to learn English, but their preference to NAE caused perhaps by their instrumental learning type. For example, Korean university graduates must have a favorable Test of English as International Communication (TOEIC) result which listening part is taped in NAE. Notwithstanding the competitiveness in job placement that has become more in more incline with international job placement for higher salaries.

As teachers to these kinds of learners then, it is imperative that we have to use the North American accentuation. This is not only for the students’ appreciation of the teaching process but to meet the needs of the learners as well.

However, we must recognize the evolution of the international auxiliary language and Philippine English being one of them. Philippine English has the accentuation of the British English and the structure of the American English. This salient feature of English in the Philippines is brought about by the effect of the local dialects or languages in the islands versus the English language. Also, the enunciation and aspiration of the Philippine national language, Filipino, affects the sound of English in the Philippines. So that even if Filipinos use similar phonetics of the NAE, production of sound is different since the aspiration of the word as well as the placement of sound are snappy if not stern.

Filipinos has different set of critical sounds than the Koreans. At times, even the Filipino has been exposed to the English language for a long time, he shows strong regional accent. The problem for most Filipinos is the production of “a” sound. English has a lot of various way to sound “a”. There is no glottal projection in the Filipino sound system. That’s why glottal sound is some kind of hard to aspire. Another is the difference of the sound production of “sheep” and “ship”. In most cases, the Filipinos produce clipped sound of the vowels. In the consonant sound system, ‘f’, ‘p’, ‘b’ and ‘v’ are the victims of sound production assassination. Most of the time, Filipinos interchange sound of these consonants which at times are really confusing. Vibration sound of ‘th’ is removed. For those who try to sound well, they sounded a lot fake if not exaggerated. This is though acceptable being international auxiliary language.

Filipinos tend to have strong intonation, but it’s usually toward the end of the phrase or sentence. It is very clear sometimes that a person taking an entire pattern and imposing it on the English words. The language has five vowels that make words being pronounced clearly. The lack of concept of schwa or other reduced vowels may make over-pronunciation. The absence of long and short vowel sound might be very confusing to hear for the native speakers.

These deviations on sound production and accentuation have been the subject of mirth among Filipinos themselves. However, the concept that the native speakers of English never care about how English is being pronounced somewhere or, making another pidgin English is less to their concern is not true to our learners. It might be very praiseworthy to spread out a pidgin English from the Philippines but the Filipinos have the reputation to learn any language easily. Good enough! To add the phrase ‘ in their own style’ might not be acceptable.


Since pronunciation is very contagious, it is very important that the teacher must have exact way to say things. This level of exactness does not follow accentuation. The segmental production has uniformity in all kinds of accentuation. However, to meet the needs of the learner, Filipino-English teachers for Koreans must have the accent of the international prestige dialect of the North American English or what we call the American Standard English.

There is another thing. The objective of communication is to deliver the message to the receiver to the best the sender could do. What happens when a sender would try to flaunt his language or over articulate his sound production? Well, what if the receiver is an ESL student like Korean - English learners? Will that not be a waste of energy to talk to the moon?

We need to choose our words carefully when we talk to our learners. Aside from effective word choice, we also need to use purposeful talk and accurate sound production. We have to avoid artificial and stilted language that more often obscure the meaning than communicates it clearly.

Also, we have to avoid going around Robinhood’s barn when we talk to our students. Pompous language has no room in a language learning class. Wordiness is often perceives as laziness or carelessness. If our object is to communicate, as teachers we need to communicate well. Remember that we are models to our students. The kind of talking we give them would be the kind of talking they will carry through. Our learners are not just simply passing through us, they are us. Therefore, we have the responsibility to guide them and lead them to a proper way to communicate to the English-world.

Now, what do you think about how we should sound?