Yessica11

I don't think we should teach all of the accents, just expose the students. Like you said, it's impossible to teach all of them. I know that I cannot even successfully imitate the majority of American accents. I'm Southern, so I have a southern accent. On the other hand, I believe when we teach English as a second or foreign language, our speech is altered. I have noticed that when I speak to people whose first language is not English, I tend to minimize my accent in order to be easily understood. I have spoken with other ESL instructors who say the same thing. Because of the altering, they are not taught a specifically southern American accent, but probably a more general one. I hope that makes sense.

Robert Pattinson apparently has the "Queen's British" accent, I believe. Here is a good example of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6-cgs34iig

I read an article that did a study (N. Coupland and H. Bishop) in the UK to see which "British" accent is the favorite. They overwhelming chose the "Queen's English" as the most appealing accent. The "Queen's English" is also called Received Pronunciation (RP), which is typically what English Teachers learn if they learn English as a Second Language to teach it. (Hope that makes sense.) To add to it, in Norway (another study - U. Rindal), a small group of Norwegian learners of English agree that RP is the favorite over General America (GA). They see RP as sounding more intelligent and more adult-ish. However, they prefer GA for informal settings with their friends. It's a very interesting study. I believe there is this tug-and-pull affect between the two giants in the English standard accent world because of, not only what the majority of English teachers are teaching...RP..., but that they have a lot of exposure to the American accent through their media. I live in Sweden for a year and the radio, theater, and tv were all bombarded with America! They were coated with it. So for social settings, the Norwegian teens preferred GA, but the preferred RP for basically everything else.

I actually just finished up a research paper about pronunciation and accents for my graduate program. The relationship between accent and pronunciation is completely inseparable. For English, the two most taught accents are Receive Pronunciation (Queen's English) and General American. Typically learners like to focus their English studies on a popular accent and learn that pronunciation. It's hard for someone who is a NS of English to not teach towards their own accent, but I think it's important to expand your students' input in the classroom from one general accent to others. Perhaps the other accents could include some fluent NNSs and other NS accents. If you don't expose them to these other pronunciations, could it harm their learning? That's not necessarily proven, but it's good to walk into a classroom with the concept of English being an International Language and not one that is bound to a certain group just because that's where you learned to pronounce it. I'm geeking out over here.