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standard english dialects

Interesting debate on BBC Radio 4's Today programme and News site on whether Standard English should be imposed on school pupils where, in the case of a secondary school in Middlesbrough, a strong local accent predominates. As regards the school in question, the head teacher didn't want to remove the local accent but wanted to ensure that the pupils were not left at a disadvantage in later life by not knowing Standard English. In a mainly monolingual country such as England there will always be anxiety about the loss of regional accents. Promoting second language acquisition at primary and secondary school could do much to encourage both a greater acceptance in the wider community of plurality of expression in the use of English; it could also, just as importantly, have the spin-off benefit of providing those who live in areas with strong regional accents, greater confidence with the whole idea of 'code switching' i.e. from one language to another, from one dialect of English to another.