TWO decades ago, what was the world view about international English? What was the appropriate English for international education?
This quotation from the British Council chairman in 1983 is quite amazing: "our language is our greatest asset, and the supplier is inexhaustible. Furthermore why we do not have a monopoly, we need to invest and fully exploit this god given asset."
The variety of English
The view from the British Council was very much that British English was the most desirable variety. People have prejudices about each variety of English. For example, the British and Americans version of English are desirsable, but not so much is Indian, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Asia, West Africa or East Africa. So while the notion started that people who spoke varieties from British English, Australia, America English should be able to understand each other, this was not extended to people from former colonies. This leads me to the term "world Englishes". What does that mean about teaching and assessing oral language? What then becomes the standard?
Pronunciation is only a small part of the assessment of IELTS
One of the Cambridge exams is the IELTS test. The IELTS test has samples in the listening part of the test. There are people from a variety of different Englishes, it's no longer just British English or American English. So in many samples of the listening test, the students have to listen to people from a variety of different Englishes. So what I am going to try to take are some samples based round all of the standards and criteria for the IELTS examination.
The IELTS test has a nine-point scale, and assesses spoken English on four dimensions: fluency and coherence, lexical resources, grammatical range and accuracy and pronunciation. The pronunciation, or accent, is only a small part of the assessment. Fluency and coherence is also important, so is the choice of the vocabulary, the grammatical range and accuracy. I am going to illustrate this by choosing only band 6, because it was the entrance level for universities.
For a 6, he used a connective and discourse marker is used but not always appropriately. This is because they may lose coherence at times, do occasional self-repetition or hesitation. The second criteria is lexical resources, a person at level 6 had a wide enough vocabulary to discuss topics and make meaning clear even though his choice of vocabulary may not always be appropriate. This doesn't effect the ability to be comprehend. Grammatical range and accuracy at band 6 uses a mix of simple and complex structures, but with limited flexibilities. Frequent mistakes with complex structures may be made, however they rarely cause comprehension problems. A level 6 can be understood throughout, though their mispronunciation may occasionally cause strain. It doesn't mean that they will sound like a native speaker.
I will illustrate this with some examples from the IELTS online preparation programme. (Recording played) We would rate her around 8, because some of you may find difficulty understanding her. The reason you may not give her a high score is because she came from a country you know little about. You would probably seldom interact with speakers from that country. She is from Argentina, and her first language is Spanish. The more familiar you are with the speaker of that particular variety of English, the easier for you to understand the speaker.
Next, I will show you some people who are taking the speaking test. (Recording played) This one is higher than 6, at about a 7, She is actually from Thailand.This shows that to get good scores, you don't have to be a native English speaker, It is perfectly fine to speak Thailand English, Chinese English, whatever, and you can still score very well on the assessment.
The next sample is about an entire test, but I am going to choose one section of it, (Recording played) She got 5.5 and it's mostly because of the lexical issue and grammatical issues rather than her Japanese English letting her down. Remember how many different varieties of English we have heard; they are all effective way of communication.
I want to again make clear the notion that Chinese English is just as valued as any other variety of English, including that which is found in Australia, America, Britain or anywhere else.
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Prof. Denise Murray：澳大利亚麦夸里大学国家英语教学研究中心（National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research, Macquarie University)主任。研究方向：跨文化文学及语言研究。
