(no subject)

[cimorene]

So as the lone native speaker in an English "shower" (less than an immersion which in Finnish is a "bath", so it's a sort of pun) daycare where part of the paid service is using English phrases with children, should I correct my Finnish coworkers' mispronunciations?

I've noticed two so far, but I haven't corrected them. In one case she'd already taught all the children to pronounce "owl" OH-wl, and in the other she wasn't talking to the children at all and I presume she just said pudding ("POOdding") so any little eavesdroppers wouldn't realize we were having chocolate for snacktime and get excited in advance.

People feel quite differently about such things - some welcome it and some hate it - so usually I don't offer corrections without strong reason to believe the person would welcome it, usually when they've asked me to teach them something. But having been told that I was chosen for the work practice partly so they could get the benefit of my English skills (although the context for that was using them to talk to the children!)...?

Comments

[james]

Don't correct them unless you ask them privately if they want to be corrected. Otherwise, just speak your English and let them pick up things. (Besides, there's a lot of ways to correctly pronounce a word in English, because of regional accents.)

[kellyfaboo]

I would probably employ the active listening technique of rephrase and repeat. "Pudding is the snack this afternoon? Alright."

If they are privileging the "neutral" Midwest American accent over the received pronunciation British accent (some language schools do) then it would be helpful for everyone to hear how you pronounce things as long as you don't have striking regionalisms.

[cimorene]

That's a good suggestion! Also useful even if there was nothing mispronounced, since the children are very elementary English learners still for the most part.

[niqaeli]

Given you were chosen partly for your English language skills, and using English with the children is something your daycare is deliberately doing, it's reasonable to think that the management might want you to?

So, personally, I'd check in with your manager first, to see if they want you to offer corrections to your co-workers -- as others have noted, there's plenty of regional accents in English so often there's a lot of correct pronunciations -- and if they do, I'd definitely try to approach giving any corrections as suggested with a rephrase/repeat. Because, yeah, it's a very touchy thing, and in just about any other scenario you wouldn't!

[twistedchick]

You may also be encountering the difference in pronunciation and meaning between American English and British English, for instance "pudding", which is a kind of dessert in the US but means "dessert" in general in Britain.

I agree about checking with the manager on corrections.

[cimorene]

That's a word I'm familiar with in a common-ish British accent or two, but of course there are still regional accents I can't figure out how to check on.

[jamjar]

When I was doing the TESOL thing, we were taught to model rather than correct, if possible-- the trick being to make it as natural as possible.

"When we have the POOdding later, I want the chocolate."

"Nice-- If you have the chocolate pudding, I can have the vanilla."

"So [Child], do you like OH-wls?"

"I like owls too..."

The main thing being not disrupting the conversation or breaking the flow of speech, but modelling the correct one as part of it-- so it's all just part of them picking up the general improvement of their conversation skills.

[cimorene]

Thank you, that's quite useful!