We need to talk about accent

In this presentation, we will look at the need to talk about accent, both for the benefit of our learners, and for our own professional development.
1. For learners, accent awareness is relevant for both speaking and listening:
- In speaking, learners must sometimes go beyond the baseline of intelligibility, to explore how their accent reflects their identity, and consider how it will affect the impression they make on others.
- In listening, leaners must be flexible enough to accommodate accent variation among the speakers they listen to, and we can be explicit about accent variation in preparing them for this.
2. For teachers, accent-awareness is necessary for understanding which pronunciation features are essential for intelligibility and which are merely cosmetic. Without this, we depend to heavily on the guidance of models which may reinforce a standard language ideology and native-speakerism.