BERKELEY'S NEWS • DECEMBER 21, 2022
Legals
Campus addresses criticism for semesterly English Pronunciation Workshop
ANITA LIU | STAFF
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Kavya Gupta
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SEPTEMBER 08, 2022
Some members of the UC Berkeley community recently took to Twitter to express their discontentment with campus’s English Pronunciation Workshop, which is offered once a semester through the International Office.
The purpose of the workshop is to support international students and scholars in the process of adjusting to the U.S.’s academic and social environment, according to campus International Office Director Ivor Emmanuel.
However, campus doctoral alumnus Alfonso Fierro expressed concern on Twitter about the language used in the workshop announcement, which claimed to provide tools for “improving” American-English pronunciation.
“More concerning to me is when fellow graduate students are required or strongly encouraged by their departments to take these workshops under the justification that “improving” their American accent is indispensable to teach in Berkeley,” Fierro said in an email.
While Emmanuel, who leads the 45-minute workshop, expressed sentiments similar to Fierro about accents, he noted that the workshop’s intention is not to imply otherwise.
The workshops are taught by Bonu Ghosh, an instructor at the English Studies Institute, which is not affiliated with campus. Ghosh is credentialed with a Master’s degree in teaching English as a second language and as a foreign language. She said she has been leading the workshop for 14 years, which has a one-time optional offering at the beginning of each fall and spring semester.
“It is my firm belief that an accent is NOT a bad thing,” Emmanuel said in an email. “I start each workshop by saying: ‘English is now a global language of communication and therefore there are different English accents and ways of using English to communicate. Clarity in communication is necessary for mutual understanding and that is the purpose of this workshop.’”
Fierro, who is also an assistant professor of Spanish at Kenyon College, also alleged that some international graduate students he knew were mandated to participate in the workshops to become GSIs, noting that he himself was exempted because he taught mainly in Spanish.
However, organizers of the events emphasized that the workshops have never been made mandatory. According to Anna McCreedy, campus international student advisor, this particular event is one of campus’s most popular — this semester’s workshop filled up within five minutes of its announcement, McCreedy noted.
Additionally, Ghosh said the workshops are not only voluntary but also free for students to attend.
“We would not host it if there was not a very clear interest and demand for it among the population that we serve,” McCreedy said in an email. “It is also absolutely not mandated in any way, shape, or form. In fact, none of our workshops are mandated, and students are free to choose if they would like to attend or not.”
SEPTEMBER 11, 2022
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