Project 3

Pham Huong Giang

University of Arizona/HLU
ENG 106
Nikki Overcash
January 3, 2023
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Part 1: Rewrite

@ofeliazepeda . Apr 5, 2019

“ Your accent is so horrible! How will you teach our children with that accent?” This is a

comment from one of my student's parents about my accent. And recently, the Wall Street

Journal also reported that the Arizona Department of Education announced that teachers who

speak English they consider to have an accent or poor grammar should be removed from the

classroom for students who are still learning English. That has me shook !!!

So, I write this thread to answer the question: "Does the professor's accent, specifically my

accent, affect students' ability to learn?"

#AccentBias #LinguisticRacism #Spoken English

@ofeliazepeda . Apr 5, 2019

1) Having an accent isn’t the same as a lack of skill, unintelligible or ungrammatical. What

has the most impact on students' receptivity is the teacher's teaching skills and professional

qualifications, not their accent. Obviously, when your child listens to a teacher from Spain,

he/she can still understand and grasp the lesson. So, it can be seen that what affects students'

ability to absorb is the teacher's teaching skills, not the teacher's accents.

@ofeliazepeda . Apr 5, 2019

2) Although I admit that proficiency in language, specifically English, is essential for

teachers. But removing from the classroom is too severe a punishment for a teacher. Just

because they have an accent, do they have to be treated like that?

Nahh there are more ways! Training teachers and improving the quality of incoming

recruitment is more appropriate than excluding them from classrooms !!!

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@ofeliazepeda . Apr 5, 2019

3) Actually, teachers always try to pronounce words correctly as a native speaker (of course,

no teacher wants to speak a language that no one understands when teaching) but for many

reasons, they cannot have the ideal accent like a native speaker, for example, sometimes their

mother tongue does not allow them to do so. Another reason could be that they want to

maintain their own identity, even if they speak a different language

@ofeliazepeda . Apr 5, 2019

4) And you know what, exposure to a variety of speech styles, dialects and accents can help

students' language acquisition. Students need to be able to communicate in the real world, not

just in the classroom.

@ofeliazepeda . Apr 5, 2019

5) Each person has a different accent. If students only listen to the native speaker's accent, do

you think students can hear and understand other foreigners (maybe from Korea, India,

Cambodia...) speaking English? It cannot be stereotyped like that!

@ofeliazepeda . Apr 5, 2019

6) When adults learn a new language (a second language), if we have the opportunity to be

exposed to a variety of variations of that language (specifically, accent), our absorption will

increase. This is because we will realize that native speakers' pronunciation is not always the

"ideal model" and in many cases, it is not really appropriate.

@ofeliazepeda . Apr 5, 2019

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7) Children are the same! Being exposed to many different variations and accents will help

them realize the newness and diversity of the language they are learning.

@ofeliazepeda . Apr 5, 2019

8) So, I am a professor, and I know what I need to do best for my students. I love my accent. I

still go on. There is no such thing as "having an accent". Don't judge!

And how about your thoughts? LMK!!

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Part 2: Explanation

Teaching effectiveness is unaffected by a strong accent.

In the digital age, converting academic articles into another format, namely into

concise blog posts on social networks, is becoming increasingly popular. The main goal is to

make these academic articles accessible to a wider audience. Therefore, a position statement

published by the University of Arizona’s Department of Linguistics against the state’s

“English Fluency Initiative” has been revised and rewritten in the form of a Twitter blog post.

For this approach, I made some changes including the registration type, intelligence,

structure, and audience outreach strategy. To make these modifications easier for readers to

understand, this essay will explain and describe specifically the reason why I chose this

format and make those changes.

The primary objective of this conversion is to expand the article's readership. Because

of this, I chose the approach of a microblog thread that is uploaded on Twitter. According to

thesocialshepherd.com (2023), Twitter has approximately 353 million users globally. The

number of Twitter users is large and diverse so it can reach a wider range of audiences. On

the one hand, the original text is primarily aimed at those who already know basic science.

On the contrary, when converting to microblog form, the audience I aim for is everyone,

including those who know nothing about science, can read and understand. On the other

hand, most people use Twitter because of its convenience. Because of these, to suit the

characteristics of users as well as this type of social platform, rewriting academic text is not

only about condensing the academic content but also making it accessible, straightforward,

and attractive to my intended readers.

With this approach, I have briefly provided my problem background through a story.

As a professor at the University of Arizona, some parents have complained about my accent

and said that with that accent I am not capable of teaching. To refute this opinion and also
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bring a position statement of the University of Arizona’s Department of Linguistics (2010)

closer to my intended audience, I chose two discussion points from eight listed in the original

statement include: “ "Heavily accented" speech is not the same as "unintelligible" or

"ungrammatical" speech" and “Exposure to many different speech styles, dialects and accents

helps (and does not harm) the acquisition of a language. (p. 1)

To achieve this goal, I made a lot of changes in my rewrite. The first change is the

register type, which means shifting from formal to informal language. This change can be

seen in my use of exclamation sentences, rhetorical questions, and more intimate sentences

throughout my posts. From a sociolinguistic perspective, it can be seen that the original text

uses a formal tone, standard English as well as academic language. For example, in the

original text, the authors wrote: “Clearly, no teacher should have an “accent” so marked that

his or her students cannot understand him or her…” (p.2). By contrast, to maintain an

informal tone as well as ensure it is suitable for my intended audience, in the rewrite, I

replaced it with a more intimate sentence: “Actually, teachers always try to pronounce words

correctly as a native speaker (of course, no teacher wants to speak a language that no one

understands when teaching)…”. I've changed to phrases used mainly in a spoken language

like "actually" and of course". This makes the content more accessible and more relevant to a

general audience. It also makes the sentence less academic and more conversational, which

can capture the reader's interest more effectively.

Another example, while in the original text, the author wrote: “… but existing hiring

and training practices are sufficient to mitigate this” (p. 2), in the rewritten text I wrote:

“Nahh there are more ways! Training teachers and improving the quality of incoming

recruitment is more appropriate than excluding them from classrooms !!!”. I have rewritten

this sentence in a more informal and conversational tone than the original text. Specifically, I

used the word "Nahh". This makes my writing feel like a conversation with my audience.
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This will encourage readers to interact with the content more. Furthermore, I understand that

only stating or elaborating on an issue would render the content boring. Instead, I choose to

write a lot of sentences expressing personal emotions in my posts. In fact, the audience will

be able to see my attitude toward this problem as a result, and they will probably feel greater

sympathy for me. Sentences like this are a way to increase the interaction between me and the

reader and will make my writing less formal than the original text.

Additionally, to quickly generalize the content I want to mention in this thread, I also

chose to use a rhetorical question instead of just mentioning it dryly. Specifically, in the

rewritten text I use the sentence: "Does the professor's accent, specifically my accent, affect

students' receptive ability?" to to summarize the content I want to mention. The change is

formed based on the characteristics of Twitter users. Most people who use social networks,

specifically Twitter, tend to want to update information quickly but still completely.

Therefore, I chose to put a rhetorical question at the beginning of the post, both to help the

audience immediately realize what I will convey in this thread, and to make my post attract

many readers who are curious about the real answer to this question. I believe that there will

be no one who is not curious about the real answer when faced with a question.

The second change is the intelligibility. This is shown through the way I recreated the

idea in the original post. In other words, I rewrote the ideas in the original article in a way

that is easier to understand for the general public. For example, in the original text, the

authors mention: “…. intelligibility and accentedness are partially independent. In other

words, it is possible to be completely intelligible and yet be perceived as having a heavy

accent” (Derwing and Munro 2009 : 479).” (p.2). This sentence is not difficult to understand,

but to reach the general public, it is not really specific enough. Because of this, I decided to

add an example directly to clarify this sentence, specifically: " Obviously, when your child

listens to a teacher from Spain, he/she can still understand and grasp the lesson”. Instead of
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using a sample from a scientific study, I decided to use one from a professor's actual life. This

both makes my article more convincing and ensures the appropriate shortness for a post.

The third change I have made in my rewrite is the use of simple, shorter, more

straightforward sentences and basic structures. In the original text the author points out that:

"If variability of input facilitates language acquisition for a child's first language and for

adults learning a second language, it almost certainly facilitates children's learning of a

second language." (p. 3). On the contrary, in the rewritten version, I do not use such a long

sentence but divide it into 2 posts so that readers can easily find the similarities between

children and adults. In the previous article, I started with the sentence: "When adults learn a

new language..." and in the next post, I started with the sentence: "Children are the same

way!". Dividing it into posts like this makes my articles more instrumental. Each post is a

specific idea but still connected and seamless. This change is mainly due to changes in the

speech community. As mentioned above, most Twitter users often want to update information

quickly. Therefore, using sentences that are too long and too complex can make readers feel

inconvenient and time-consuming. Instead, short sentences with full meaning will be more

convenient for the audience to grasp the information.

The fourth change is the use of examples. Most of the examples used in the original

text are quite voluminous scientific studies. This is quite understandable because the original

text is aimed at those who have already understood a little bit of the basic science. However,

in the rewritten text, my intended audience is the general public. Therefore, using all the

examples in the original text could lead to confusion for my intended audience. Therefore, in

the rewritten text, I mainly use real-life examples. For example, when talking about exposure

to linguistic diversity being necessary for student acquisition, the original text cites research:

"Evidence from studies of language acquisition shows that increased variability in the

pronunciation of words that children hear appears to facilitate - and not slow - acquisition of
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linguistic patterns by very young children (Singh 2008, Richtsmeier et al.,2009)" (p.3). In the

rewritten text when giving an example of this idea, I give specific examples of the types of

accents and variations that students may be exposed to: "...other foreigners (maybe from

Korea, India, Cambodia...)...". Obviously, not all audiences on Twitter are aware of those

studies and fully understand the views expressed in the original text. Twitter users are mainly

young people, so if I present long-standing and massive research, it may confuse them.

Furthermore, my target audience is the general public. Therefore, I choose to replace it with

practical examples, which are both easier to understand and more specific to the ideas I am

following.

The final change is the usage of slang and more audience-friendly attractions. First,

using slang on social networking platforms as well as in daily conversations is no longer

something strange. Using slang for posts is a way to make my posts more relatable to the

audience and less formal than the original text. For instance, in the article, I use slang to

express my feelings: "That has me shook". The word “shook” here is a slang word used to

describe the state of shock and surprise when faced with an unexpected issue. I used this

word to express my surprise at parents' comments about my accent and The Arizona

Department of Education's announcement of removing teachers without accents from

classrooms. In fact, using this slang word would not be very appropriate as a professor.

However, I see that Twitter users are mostly young people and they use slang words when

uploading posts on Twitter a lot. I think that, as a professor, if I can still grasp the words that

young people often use, the content of the article will attract more young people and will be

more interesting to them. I believe that using slang words is not bad, professors can still use

slang words to express their attitudes. However, the use of slang words must ensure civility

and standards. Because of this, my use of slang in the first post is to emphasize my attitude as

well as the audience can immediately see my position on this issue.

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Second, I also use hashtags. I use the hashtags “#AccentBias #LinguisticRacism

#Spoken English” in my posts. First of all, these hashtags are directly related to the content I

am developing. Furthermore, using hashtags also helps readers grasp article information

quickly, which means they will look at these hashtags and immediately know what content I

want to convey. Besides, hashtags also make my posts easily identifiable on Twitter. In

general, using audience-friendly attractions is to achieve the goal of the article, which is to

make the article reach a more diverse audience and ensure it is suitable for the registration

shift that I am looking for.

In this project, the transformation from a position statement published by the

University of Arizona’s Department of Linguistics to against the state’s “English Fluency

Initiative” to the microblog thread is uploaded on Twitter has been performed. Many changes

have been made, and all of them are explained in detail in this essay. In general, it can be seen

that with each different format, each article has different characteristics. This difference

mainly comes from the author's intended audience. Therefore, the author needs to fully grasp

the information and characteristics of the type of format that the author is making to ensure it

is suitable for the targeted audience.

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REFERENCES

thesocialshepherd.com (2023) 23 Essential Twitter (X) Statistics You Need to Know in 2024

https://thesocialshepherd.com/blog/twitter-statistics

University of Arizona Department of Linguistics Position Statement (May 2010)

https://d2l.arizona.edu/content/enforced/1367425-570-2234-COCENGL106530/

Linguistics%20Position%20Statement%20May%202010.pdf