I still believe I was hired out of desperation. At my job interview as a freshly qualified teacher of English as a Second Language (ESL), I was asked about the present perfect tense. After bumbling for a minute, I had to confess that I couldn’t remember what it was.
To my astonishment, two days later I was being ushered into my new workplace, a staffroom of mainly Caucasian women who all sounded British, American, or Australian. My mouth went dry as I introduced myself, keenly aware of how made-in-the-Philippines I sounded.
It’s not that I doubted my English. Not only was it our first language at home, we were lovers of its literature. My father would read me modern American poetry at bedtime, and by the time I was seven, I could recite them by heart.
My mouth went dry as I introduced myself, keenly aware of how made-in-the-Philippines I sounded.
Even at a young age, I knew I spoke it well. I was nicknamed “the walking dictionary” at school, and I made sure not to embarrass my English teacher when she would quietly take me aside and ask me how to pronounce a certain word. I would devour an English novel each week, from contemporary to the classics. I spent a summer in Oxford studying and performing Shakespearian theatre, falling in love with the language. By age 20, I was presenting in English on TV.
I was also keenly aware that there was a preferred accent. English came from our American colonisers, and many Filipinos speak with a vaguely Californian twang gleaned from Hollywood movies and pop music. Get this accent wrong and you will be mocked. There is an endless stream of Filipino humour centred around the failure to sound Anglo. Want to hear a joke? Say ‘fact sheet’ with a heavy Filipino accent and you get two English swear words.
Filipinos think they sound American until they actually go to America, or in my case, Australia. After moving to Sydney, it didn’t take long for me to realise that my accent was not ‘Anglo’. Why did people keep asking where I was from every time I opened my mouth? Why did other “Filos” laugh at me for sounding “fresh”?
Most baffling was how people praised my English like I wasn’t supposed to be good at it. Once, after casually using the word ‘bifurcate’ in class, my Australian teacher remarked, “Oh? Who taught you that word?”
Most baffling was how people praised my English like I wasn’t supposed to be good at it. Once, after casually using the word ‘bifurcate’ in class, my Australian teacher remarked, “Oh? Who taught you that word?”
But the focus on my accent and my English was a constant reminder that I was an outsider. Self-consciousness took root. My tongue lurched and stumbled as it wrestled with an identity crisis: I sounded all wrong.
And so, I walked into my classroom on my first day as a language teacher, bracing for rejection. How long would it take my foreign students to realise that they would be getting just a poor man’s knock-off of the real thing?
Even our UK-based learning materials rattled my confidence. My speaking sounded nothing like the recordings of British people that we used in pronunciation classes. Would it be better if sounded like them?
A few months into teaching, a student approached me. “Teacher,” she said, “I love the way you talk. I can hear your English more.”
"My father would read me modern American poetry at bedtime, and by the time I was seven, I could recite them by heart." Source: Supplied
At first I didn’t know what she meant about “hearing my English”. But as more students told me the same thing, some even going as far as transferring into my class, I began to realise that I had something going for me. To the English learner, my Filipino accent made me easier to understand.
A few months into teaching, a student approached me. “Teacher,” she said, “I love the way you talk. I can hear your English more.”
While the Aussie tongue is laidback, Tagalog-speakers are used to tackling real tongue-twisters. The phonology of our language requires much more physical effort, which carries over into the way we articulate our English. We also love our voluptuous rolling Rs whereas Aussies conserve theirs like water during a drought. No wonder they could “hear” me better.
As a teacher, I learned that even the most high-level English speakers can be deeply insecure about their accent showing through. But I realised that one of the best things I could teach my students, aside from grammar and vocabulary, was to embrace sounding like themselves.
I learned to free my natural tongue, my Filipino accent with its cadence and nuance. I no longer needed the express approval of the coloniser in my head to sound like myself.
Through time, I was pleased to discover that the English teaching community was a diverse one. I have worked in staffrooms where the teachers have sounded Brazilian, Argentinean, Iranian, Indian, Chinese, Polish, and who knows where from. What did it matter? The language was the same.
And readers, I became a real pro at teaching the present perfect.
Ala Paredes is a writer, artist, and teacher living in Sydney. Follow her on Instagram @alaparedes
