Which pronunciation does the class recite in?
Eighteen students of Classes IX and XI are preparing a twelve-line poem for choral recitation at the school's Tai language week, ten days away. Roughly half speak one home variety and half another. In rehearsal the two groups give the same written word in line 4 clearly different pitch contours, and the second group does not sound the final consonant of the last word of line 7. A girl says her grandmother says the line-4 word the way her group says it and asks whether she is wrong. A visiting teacher proposes that everyone be corrected to whatever the class teacher says. The class teacher has the prescribed textbook with its tone marks, but no recording, no fluent colleague, and no time to bring an elder in before the event.
1. What is the class's performance standard for the unison recitation, and why is it not the same thing as correct pronunciation?
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They are two different questions, and the class must be told so in that order.
What is correct Tai? Both groups are speaking a variety of Tai. The written word is fixed by the primer; the pitch contour on it is not fixed across varieties, and the teacher is not in a position to declare one home speech wrong. The missing final consonant in line 7 is a different matter only if the primer's consonant is still written there - then the class is reciting a written text and the letter must be honoured, even if the home variety drops it in speech.
What is our class standard? A unison item needs one contour; if two halves of the choir sing the same word on two contours, the audience hears a mistake even though nothing is wrong. So choose one model - the textbook's tone marks, read as consistently as the teacher can manage - and announce it as the class's performance standard for this one item, not as the correct pronunciation of Tai.
Two safeguards: write the chosen model on the board as a contour diagram, not as a claim about the language; and never let the standard leak into the individual oral test, where home speech is evidence, not error.
2. How should the individual oral marks be awarded so that neither group is penalised for home speech?
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Fix the criteria in writing before the event, because after the event every mark looks like a judgement about a child's family.
Use three criteria that do not reward accent:
- Audibility and delivery - volume, breath, line endings, pausing at the right place. This is where most of the marks should sit.
- Ensemble holding - during the unison item only, does the student hold the agreed class model with the group? Mark it as a group skill, not as a personal verdict; a student who drifts once is not 'wrong Tai', she is not yet holding a part.
- Ear and reproduction - a short individual item in which the student hears two words and says whether they are the same or different, then repeats a contrast the class has been taught. This tests the skill the syllabus actually wants: hearing tone, not sounding like the teacher.
A student who consistently uses a home contour can score full marks if she can hear the contrast and identify it. Announce this before rehearsals so no group thinks the test is a loyalty test. If a student asks to use her own contour in the solo line, allow it - the solo is where variety can be heard without breaking the ensemble.
3. What do you say to the girl, and what do you do with the visiting teacher's suggestion?
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To the girl: her grandmother is not wrong, and the class is not correcting her grandmother. Explain the two-level answer in one sentence - the class is choosing one model for one performance, and a model is a decision, not a truth. Then give her a job: with her grandmother's permission, record the line-4 word and the line-7 word on a phone. That recording becomes teaching material for the whole class, and the girl moves from being the problem to being the source. A ten-second recording also settles the line-7 final consonant in a way that no argument in the staffroom can.
To the visiting teacher: thank them, then redirect the impulse. Correction is the right instinct and the wrong target. Offer them the ensemble criterion - audibility, line endings, holding the part - which is exactly where an outside ear is useful, and which does not require them to adjudicate between varieties. Say the distinction out loud in front of the class, because the students are watching how a disagreement between teachers is handled: if the visiting teacher's proposal is simply overruled, the class learns that only the class teacher's mouth is authoritative.
Follow up after the event: play both recordings side by side and ask the class what changed and what stayed the same. That is a fifteen-minute lesson in how a language varies, and it costs nothing.