Now, just as a preamble, I want to say that I like coursebooks, I use coursebook material in many of my lessons and I have the utmost respect for coursebook authors who often come up with some great stuff.
That being said, I have a question: Who recruits the actors for the audio files? I mean come on! Why are like 80% of them played by people who, I’m sure are very nice, but who can’t act….at all. The acting is often so bad that it often renders perfectly good material close to unusable. I mean, it’s so bad that before using an audio file in class I systematically have to check if it sounds somewhat believable. Most of the time it doesn’t.
We teachers shouldn’t have to do this. Can’t the big editors find decent actors? And if they’re looking for someone with a German accent, can’t they find an actual German? Why do they force English or American actors to put on a fake Japanese, French and Spanish accents? It just ends up sounding ridiculous. Listen to this clip below that I took from a popular coursebook from one of the biggest publishers in the industry (I put the images in as a representation of what I picture in my head as I listen to this dialogue).
Do you see what I’m saying? The first guy sounds like the butler from some bad sitcom, and the women sounds like a robot! I mean she literally sounds like she runs on electricity. How am I supposed to get my students to take that seriously?
Well, I’ve found the answer: I don’t ask them to take it seriously. I now openly make fun of the acting before playing clips like this. I say something like, “Ok guys, we’re now going to listen to a project planning meeting. Try to focus on the following points……..Now mind you, this dialogue is completely unrealistic. They plan out an entire merger in 2 minutes time and the acting is horrible. Try not to laugh and focus on the language that you could use in your jobs”.
It actually works! I’ve tested it about 50 times now. Once students know that you know that the dialogue is kind of ridilulous they can take it for what it is, a text that was made to display predefined language chunks. If you sit there and pretend that you’re genuinely interested in the dialogue, you generally genuinely lose their interest and probably a little of their respect. Just because our students are learning English doesn’t mean they’re dumb! Come on editors, find some decent actors!
eshalvorsen
April 22nd, 2012 at 11:23 am
Great post, Eric! I enjoyed that.
I thought I’d throw my two cents in, as I’ve been in more of these recording sessions than I’d care to remember, both as an editor and as an author.
More often than not, the issue isn’t with the actors. In fact, if you’re using a coursebook produced by one of the big five ELT publishers, I can almost guarantee that they’ve used Equity-affiliated, professional voice actors who do ELT materials on the side to fund their other artistic endeavours (like appearing on The Archers, for example!).
What I think often causes the problems you’ve (rightly) identified are unnatural sounding dialogues (which is a writing problem, not an acting problem) or, perhaps more commonly, how the editor and producer have chosen to deal with the fact that the actors need to speak at a slower pace than usual, especially for low-level coursebooks. Some choose to literally speak really slowly, which never sounds realistic; it’s very hard to speak slowly and deliver natural sounding intonation. What’s often preferable is to tell the actors to relax, not rush, and deliver the words in a natural way, but allowing plenty of breathing time between sentences. It’s often a question of pausing a fraction longer than you would normally after full stops, to allow for some extra precious processing time on the part of the listener. It ends up sounding much closer to how a teacher grades their language for a low-level class.
The issue of foreign accents is, sadly, often one of budget. However, I’ve definitely noticed an improvement in this over the last few years. In Cambridge English for Marketing, which I wrote for CUP, I’d included lots of non-native-speaker characters in the audio part of the course. The majority – although not all – ended up being played by people from those countries. What’s weird, though – and this has happened to me more than once – is that you’re in the studio with, say, an actual German or French person, and their accent ends up sounding fake, even though it’s not. I imagine that it’s something to do with the fact that they’re actors, and therefore speaking in a certain way, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some (although certainly not all!) of the dodgy accents you’ve heard on recordings are actually real.
Thanks again for posting on this.
April 23rd, 2012 at 5:55 pm
Hi Nick,
Thanks for your insightful comment. As you can probably tell by my lack of knowledge of how much actually goes into these recordings, I have never been in a recording studio. It was really interesting to get an insider’s view.
I was probably a little over-critical in my post. I guess I knew that there are a lot of variables going on behind the scenes that the actors, authors, the studio and the editors are trying to balance. It must be pretty hard to get the balance right, I can totally appreciate that.
I think in the coursebook material that I’m familiar with, the root cause of the ‘unnaturalness’ of the audio file really depends on the which audio file it is.
Sometimes it’s clearly the writing. I think the most common things that author’s leave out are the things that define spoken discourse, hesitations, pauses, restarts, and linguistic markers like ‘So,…’, ‘Well,….’, and questions like ‘…., am I right?’. There is some material out there with these things and I’ve noticed that, when combined with decent acting, students allow themselves to ‘believe’ the story a little more and get into a bit. Often, they pick up on those words/phrases as well and ask me about them and want to know how to use them.
Sometimes the problem is the accents. I understand better now, thanks to your comments, how hard it is to get the accents right. To be honest, I feel like editors should focus less on getting as many different accents in the book as possible and more on how the whole thing sounds. It seems like allowing everyone to speak with their natural intonation and accent would be one of the easiest ways to improve the natural feel of the recordings. I
And in some audio files (like in the one I posted) , I think the problem is just plain bad acting. I was wrong to put it all on the back of the actors, though!
Thanks again for the comment.
All the best,
Eric
April 22nd, 2012 at 11:38 am
Great idea! Being honest with students about the problems with materials is something that might not occur to less experienced or less confident teachers, so good on you for pointing it out. Here’s a quote from my partner Michael Swan’s article ‘The textbook: bridge or wall?’ in his recent collection of articles ‘Thinking About Language Teaching’ (OUP, 2012:43); he’s writing about a teacher and her class who were faced with an unrealistic situation in a textbook: ‘They had done exactly what one should always do with unsuitable teaching materials: instead of respecting the textbook as something engraved on tablets of stone, they saw it as a vehicle that wasn’t going where they wanted it to, and simply hijacked it to a more suitable destination’.
Re actors, yes, of course, you’re right. It’s not straightforward, though: even when the editors find good, experienced voice actors, the actors sometimes have their own ideas about how they should record for language learners, and have to be gently brought round. Whenever we have recorded materials with our books, both Michael and I have attended every day of the recordings, along with our editor, all trying our best to make sure that the actors got things right.
Yes, of course accents should be genuine; the reason that they sometimes aren’t may be that getting someone who is both of the requisite L1 / regional dialect and also a good voice actor is a double challenge; it requires the publisher to commit to the idea that the author originally had. We were lucky to get a sensational group of genuine L1/dialect speaking skilled voice actors for the relevant bits of our recent ‘Grammar and Vocabulary’ recordings for the Oxford English Grammar Course, but this was not cheap or simple for the publisher.
Anyway, a pleasure to read your clear thinking!
April 23rd, 2012 at 7:34 pm
Hi Catherine,
That’s a very interesting quote. Thank you for sharing that. As I mentioned in the my post, I have found that sort of poking fun at the audio files helps in a lot of ways. It lightens up the atmosphere, first of all. It also let’s the students know that you see the coursebook as tool for acheieving their goals. Pointing out drawbacks while also selling what’s positive is a healthy approach to almost anything, I would say.
Another approach I take is I just plain tell them about the eternal debate in language teaching about authentic vs scripted materials. Students generally appreciate knowing that, while the German accent on this particular recording sounds robotic, there is actually a lot they can learn from it (not from the accent, from the text of course!). It helps them, and me, get beyond the unnatural sounding accents and let’s them focus on the language. Sharing the authentic/scripted debate with Ss also gives them a peek into our profession and they see that we actually think about these things, that we’re making carefully weighed decisions and not just using a coursebook because it’s there.
As I mentioned in my reply to Nick, I was probably a bit harsh and put too much on the back of the actors. I realize that there are a lot of variables to deal with when recording these things. I still think that finding authentic regional and NNS accents must be in the realm of the possible. As you mentioned, you were able to do it for your Oxford English Grammar Course.
Anyway, thank you for commenting!
Best,
Eric
April 22nd, 2012 at 12:14 pm
Hilarious! You are so right! It all starts to sound very contrived in the end. I usually try to get my learners to redo the dialogue. They seem to get more out of it by trying to put the correct intentions on certain words and expressions.
April 23rd, 2012 at 7:37 pm
Hi Didi,
Thank you for commenting. Having students act out the dialogues sounds like a good way to do it. Sometimes I’m sure they do a great job! It must also help them take some of the more difficult language on-board. Great idea.
Cheers,
Eric
April 22nd, 2012 at 6:39 pm
Hi Eric – great piece.
From the actors points of view, I wonder to what extent it’s a question of content. I remember going to the studio (with Nick R, incidentally) to record the audio for Good Practice (English for medical communication coursebook) and listening to the reaction once the actors realised they had something to ‘get their teeth into’ (Their words, not mine). Near-authentic doctor-patient interviews are not only fun to write, but also – apparently – a lot more fun to act.
I appreciate its their job and we do need audio-files for the whole range of ELT materials, content and level-wise. However, let’s also spare a thought for those poor actors trying to make a living while trying to ensure that ‘The post office is opposite the supermarket.’ is not only recorded at the ‘right’ speed, but also sounds engaging ….
I am hoping to do a piece on this topic for the next issue of the TESOL France Teaching Times
Ros
April 23rd, 2012 at 7:47 pm
Ros!
Thank you for your comment!
I think we should definitely do a piece on this in the Teaching Times. It’s an important topic and a complex one. I mean, beyond the quality of the audio files, there’s also the debate on how many audio files should a coursebook have? Authentic? Scripted? Short? Long? Natural speed or slowed? Each coursebook seems to take a different approach.
As for the quality of the writing in all this, I think you’re right, low quality writing probably has a lot to do with it. But I also think other things come into play. I mean, in the example I put in my post, there is clearly an issue. A ‘German’ accent like that shouldn’t have gotten by. But it’s easy to say as I sit safely on my blogging chair and, as you mentioned, the actors certainly don’t have it easy.
See you at the next TESOL France meeting.
Cheers,
Eric
April 25th, 2012 at 6:03 am
Hi Eric,
Interesting post.
I partly earned my way at one point recording stuff for an agency. It was all very secretive as they just called me up whenever and I sat in a dark studio with a screen reading random things. Every so often they made demands like “do this like a 4 year old” or “do it with a Liverpool accent”. And then the classic “no, again”. I used to spend from 2 hours to 6 hours in that room. My god it’s tiring on the voice and eyes.
This was with an agency so they were more interested in churning out quantity than quality so I did most of the voices. I did a few though with a woman which was better. I got the feeling that all the recordings were for different purposes which is fine but I’m sure some were all for one App or dictionary which will just sound daft. BUT better than the machine pronunciation many learning devices had.
Another problem was just the text as it was written by foreigners and not like spoken language. Thus, I begged to be allowed to proof them and I did for quite a while. Later on when I started writing my own I found it very hard to write real speech so I started transcribing real conversation and simplifying it. This takes time though and may not bee exactly what is needed ie recycling/introducing lexis/grammar points.
I have seen a lot of software that do a pretty good job of producing authentic speech and they will be the future I’m sure.