TEFL for the KGB

As a teacher for the last 30 years, I have taught hundreds of thousands of learners from all over the world in schools,  colleges, universities, palaces, swimming pools; online, offline, in line and, sometimes, clearly out of line. 

One student I remember distinctly was a glamorous Russian woman who had moved to Germany in the 1990s and taught English in schools there.  Her English pronunciation was impeccable, and so I sought to discover how she had managed to achieve such a high level of phonological proficiency.  She had learned English on the very competitive KGB language learning programme, where learners were expected to pass as native speakers of English.  The main focus of such programmes was not (initially) grammatical control nor lexical range, it was phonological control. 

On the first day of lessons, each learner was given a small compact mirror and phonetic exercises to follow.  The object of the mirror was for them to see the position of their tongue, teeth (if they had them) and lips.  In order to pass as a native speaker of English it was essential to understand the correct Place/Point Of Articulation (POA).  The Russian POA tends to be further back in the mouth than in English which is much more a front of the mouth language, relying more on the tip of the tongue to produce consonant sounds and the wide open and closed spreading of the lips to make vowel sounds. 

In my youth, I would always enjoy listening to the Moscow World service, the official mouthpiece of the USSR.  The accents of the presenters were impeccable, evidence of the hard work spent perfecting the rounded vowels, the affricates and the bilabial plosives. However, there was always one sound that would flummox them and reveal their provenance.  This was /3:/ as in ‘world’ .  the combination of this long vowel sound and the following dark l /ɫ/  velarised sound, was a sure fire way to detect any KGB sleepers in our midst. 

Phonology is an essential part of any language learning programme and as materials and methods change in language teaching, maybe we should all add a little more pronunciation practice to our lessons.  It could also become a new sideline for compact mirror manufacturers. 

By Bazakbal

Image by Diego Diaz from Pixabay.com