Lesson: The Way You Speak
A person’s accent reveals a lot about who they are, such as country of origin, place of birth, education level and social class. Some English language learners are acutely aware of their accents and desperately want to change them. Others take pride in their accent as an essential part of their identity as a person. Not only language learners are concerned about their accents, though. Every day fluent English speakers are judged by their pronunciation. It’s called language discrimination. Language discrimination refers to the unfair treatment of an individual based solely upon the characteristics of their speech, such as accent, size of vocabulary, and syntax. A failed job interview could be due to the usage of a double negative, for instance, or the way one pronounces a word. A native speaker can judge another’s social class in milliseconds by hearing just a few words. It’s not only one’s appearance which makes the first impression. I hope this topic provides you with food for thought.
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Example Article
Each conversation topic is based on a theme. In order to help students acquire a basic understanding of that topic, four media articles are provided for them to read. I will never test you on the articles, but I strongly suggest you book lessons far enough in advance to give yourself enough time to properly prepare. The better prepared you are, the more benefit you will receive from our conversations.
Below is an example article for this conversation topic.