Mom Asks Son's Tutor From The UK To 'Speak In An American Accent' So Their Son Can Understand Him
Unfortunately, the tutor noted that he has no professional acting skills.
Prostock-studio | Shutterstock When it comes to your child’s education, you naturally want to make sure they are receiving the highest quality possible. If a kid is struggling with a certain subject or concept at school, it’s common practice to hire a tutor to help them out.
One mom hired a tutor to help her son with his chemistry classes. The tutor was British, while the student was American. The mom informed the tutor via text that he needed to change the way he spoke so her son could understand him more easily, even going so far as to suggest he use an American accent.
The tutor asked if he was overreacting by thinking the accent request from the parent was strange.
In Reddit’s r/AmIOverreacting forum, the tutor shared screenshots of his text conversation with the student’s mom, along with a bit of context so users would understand what was going on. “I do online tutoring for … different subjects, but particularly I tutor chemistry for kids aged 13 [to] 15,” he shared.
Julia M Cameron | Pexels
When he sent a message to confirm an upcoming tutoring session, the mom had a strange request. “My son has expressed to me that he often times has difficulty understanding you,” she said. “So I’m asking if you can try and be more understandable?”
The tutor was, naturally, baffled by this strange question from his student’s mother. To his credit, he asked for specific examples of what he could do differently to make things easier for the student to understand. “You can just speak a little more different and that will be good,” she replied.
He admitted that would be difficult to do when he didn’t even know what words or phrases were causing a problem for the teen. “Like I said, if you could simply just speak [in] an American accent, that would be enough,” she said. When the tutor informed her that it was “easier said than done,” she countered, “Well, sorry, but who’s paying you?”
The tutor said he wanted help from his student’s mom to make the sessions better for her son, but she didn’t seem willing.
“I’m from the U.K., so I get my accent can be a challenge to understand, especially if you’re not used to it,” he stated. “And, it’s my responsibility as their tutor to help them do so. But, I have my own limitations, and that’s when parents especially need to help. I’m not asking for them to help with the curriculum, just to help me be more prepared.”
In replies to comments on his post, the tutor clarified that he was originally from London, but now lives in Manchester, and has a “stereotypical British accent.” The tutor truly seems dedicated, because several commenters suggested that he just drop the student as a client, but he didn’t want to due to the progress they had made together.
Mikhail Nilov | Pexels
Speaking in a different accent isn’t as easy as it may seem.
According to the editor of the Britannica Dictionary, the main differences between British and American English are pronunciation, vocabulary, and spelling. It’s likely the first two of these that would be the most difficult to understand. For vocabulary differences, the editor offered examples like truck and lorry, and garbage and rubbish.
As for pronunciation, they noted, “The most obvious difference is the way the letter r is pronounced. In British English, when r comes after a vowel in the same syllable (as in car, hard, or market), the r is not pronounced. In American English, the r is pronounced.”
If you’ve been speaking a certain way your entire life and aren’t a professional voice actor, it would be very difficult to suddenly change the way you sound without extensive practice. What this mom is asking is really unreasonable. She can’t expect the tutor to just slip into an American accent for her son.
This behavior is beyond entitled. It's "bloody" offensive. (See what I did there...) Perhaps the mom's attitude and her son's obvious lazy excuse to attempt to get out of his tutoring sessions are why he's struggling with chemistry in the first place.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
