What model of English should we use?

The model to be used depends on what our students want to use and what we are able to provide as teachers. Most AMEP clients are aiming to settle in Australia, and many AMEP teachers speak some variety of Australian English, and so this is a reasonable model for the AMEP. But familiarity with other accents – so-called native (eg New Zealand, British) and non-native (eg Chinese, German) – is also crucial for learners, and teachers with these accents have just as important a role to play in providing models for pronunciation. Indeed, whatever the teacher’s accent, the gap between the student’s accent and the teacher’s is much bigger than that between the accents of different teachers.