Recently, a grader transcribed a recording in this way (listen to recording below):
We can see that this grader is being very diligent about transcribing the student’s utterances exactly how they sound, which is typically a best practice. However, in this case, we can also hear that the student has a clear accent. And even though her pronunciations of “Maryland,” “would,” and “vegetable” are not 100% standard, we can reasonably say that she’s pronouncing those words correctly, with an accent.
In cases like these, teachers often reach out to us if they feel that a student is being overly punished due to an accented pronunciation. We realize there can be a lot of gray areas regarding this, so we encourage you to use your judgment regarding whether a student’s accent may be affecting their pronunciation, even though they are reading the word correctly.
This is how we regraded the recording:
