There’s an interesting story on the Guardian TEFL diary about changing attitudes to accents in the US school system.  Here’s the headline:

Arizona drops restrictions on teachers with accents

The rest of the article can be found at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/sep/13/internationaleducationnews-tefl1
What do you reckon?  How important is a teacher’s accent?  Is it better to have teachers with several different accents, or should they all have the same, standard accent?  What is a standard accent?  Is there one?

On the subject of accents, do you have any favourites?

Let us know, by posting a comment, and give an example or two if you can.

The musical My Fair Lady is about a rich man teaching a poor Cockney woman how to be a lady.  To do so he has to “correct’ her accent.

She goes from this:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZqESl-0OkA]

To this:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVmU3iANbgk]

Can you think of a more recent film version of the same story, made about 20 years ago?