The AI start-up erasing call-centre-worker accents: is it fighting bias – or

perpetuating it?
Level 2: Intermediate

1
  Warmer

a. Five of these ten words are typically American and five are British. Which are which? What are
their equivalents in the other variety of English?

sidewalk tap (n) appetizer gas area code

the fall (n) handbag cashpoint biscuit potato chips

British English American English

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 The AI start-up erasing call-centre-worker accents: is it fighting bias – or
perpetuating it?
Level 2: Intermediate

2
  Key words

a. Find the following words in the text. The paragraph numbers are given to help you.

1. (of an accent) an adjective meaning sounding as if you are speaking through your nose
(paragraph 1)

2. a verb meaning make something different (paragraph 2)

3. a noun meaning one of several problems you must solve before you can do something
successfully (paragraph 2)

4. an adjective meaning feeling annoyed and impatient because you are prevented from achieving
something (paragraph 5)

5. a verb meaning see something happen (paragraph 8)

6. a verb meaning stop something from having any effect (paragraph 8)

7. a verb meaning copy someone’s voice or behaviour (paragraph 8)

8. a verb meaning speak to someone in an angry, offensive way

(paragraph 10)

9. a verb meaning make something less or smaller (paragraph 11)

10. an adjective meaning spoken in a tone of voice that does not go up or down
(paragraph 12)

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 The AI start-up erasing call-centre-worker accents: is it fighting bias – or
perpetuating it?
Level 2: Intermediate
Wilfred Chan
Wed 24 Aug 2022
1 “Hi, good morning. I’m calling from Bangalore,
India.” I’m talking on the phone to a man with
an obvious Indian accent. He pauses. “Now I
have enabled the accent translation,” he says.
It’s the same person, but he sounds completely
different: loud and slightly nasal, like the
accents of my friends in Brooklyn.
2 The man calling me was a product manager
from Sanas, a company that’s building
real-time voice-altering technology that aims
to help call-centre workers around the world
sound like westerners. Accents are a constant
hurdle for millions of call-centre workers,
especially in countries like the Philippines
and India.
3 Sanas hopes its technology can provide a
solution. Sanas’s software can transform a
speaker’s accent into another one – and right
now, the focus is on making non-Americans
sound like white Americans.
4 Sharath Keshava Narayana, a Sanas
co-founder, told me his motivation for the
software dated back to 2003, when he started
working at a call centre in Bangalore, faced
discrimination for his Indian accent and was
forced to call himself “Nathan”.
5 “If a customer is upset about their bill being
high or their phone not working, they’re
going to be frustrated when they hear an
accent. They’re going to say, ‘I want to talk to
somebody in America.’ The agents just don’t
get the respect that they deserve right from
the beginning. But if we can just change that,
it becomes a conversation – and people both
leave the call feeling better.”
6 Narayana said their software is already being
used every day by about 1,000 call-centre
workers in the Philippines and India. User
feedback has been positive: Narayana says
agents feel more confident on the phone when
using the software.
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7 A Aneesh, a sociologist, has spent years
studying call centres and accent neutralization.
In 2007, as part of his research, he worked as
a telemarketer in India.
8 At the call centre, he witnessed the hard work
involved in changing people’s accents. “The
goal is to be understood by the Americans,” he
said. Workers had to relearn pronunciations
of words such as “laboratory”, which Indians
pronounce with the British stress on the second
syllable. They also had to eliminate parts of
Indian English and learn uniquely American
words. “They have to mimic the culture as well
as neutralize their own culture,” Aneesh said.
“Training is hard work.”
9 In addition to the low salary, Aneesh said one
of the most difficult parts of the job was being
forced to sleep all day and work all night to
adapt to times in the United States.
10 He has mixed feelings about Sanas. “On the
one hand, it’s a good thing for the trainee:
they don’t have to be trained as much. It’s
not very easy for an immigrant or foreigner
sitting somewhere else in the world to be
not understood because of their accent. And
they sometimes get abused. But on the other
hand, in the long view, as a sociologist, it’s
a problem.”
11 The danger, Aneesh said, was that artificially
neutralizing accents diminishes the humanity
of the person on the other end of the phone.
“It allows us to avoid social reality, which is that
you are two human beings on the same planet.
It’s pointing to a lonelier future.”
12 I emailed a sound demo of Sanas’s technology
to Aneesh to get his reaction. “Hearing it
closely, I realized that there was a hint of
emotion and politeness in the original caller’s
voice,” he replied. That was gone in the digitally
transformed version, “which sounds a bit
robotic, flat and … neutral”.
© Guardian News and Media 2022
First published in The Guardian, 24/08/2022
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 The AI start-up erasing call-centre-worker accents: is it fighting bias – or
perpetuating it?
Level 2: Intermediate

3
  Comprehension check
a. Are these statements True (T) or False (F) according to the article? Correct any that are false.

1. The accent-translation software changes the speaker’s accent.

2. The Sanas software makes call-centre workers sound American.

3. Sharath Narayana’s real name is Nathan.

4. Call-centre workers in India and the Philippines are already using this software.

5. Feedback from users has been mostly negative.

6. A Aneesh used to work in a call centre.

7. Workers in the call centre where he worked had to pronounce certain words with a British accent.

8. Aneesh says that the time difference between India and the USA made life difficult for the workers.

9. He doesn’t like Sanas at all.

10. He thinks that Sanas makes the speaker sound more polite.

4
  Key language

a. Match the words in the left-hand column with those in the right-hand column to make
expressions from the text.

1. product a. centre

2. call b. reality

3. real c. feedback

4. user d. feelings

5. social e. manager

6. mixed f. time

5
  Discussion

a. Discuss these statements.

• “A foreign accent is a good thing. It means you speak at least two languages.”

• “The most important thing is to be understood.”

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 The AI start-up erasing call-centre-worker accents: is it fighting bias – or
perpetuating it?
Level 2: Intermediate

6
  In your own words

a. The article refers to the pronunciation of laboratory, pronounced differently in British

English and American English. However, even within the UK and the US there are many
English accents. Additionally, there are many countries with first-language English speakers,
e.g., Jamaica, Barbados, Nigeria, India, Australia, New Zealand, Trinidad and Tobago, Republic
of South Africa, etc.. Pick one of those accents. Use an internet search engine to find out some
differences between this accent and the Received Pronunciation (or ‘standard British English’)
that is the phonemic script used in all British English dictionaries. Find examples of the same
words pronounced differently.

b. Report your findings to the class.

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 The AI start-up erasing call-centre-worker accents: is it fighting bias – or
perpetuating it?
Level 2: Intermediate – Teacher’s notes
Article summary: The article describes how
a computer program is being used to make
foreign accents sound more American so that
callers in the USA can understand operators
at call centres in countries like India.
Time: 60 minutes
2. Key words
a. Ask students to do the exercise individually and then
compare their answers in pairs or small groups. Note
that the verb alter appears in its participial form in the
compound word voice-altering, so it may be tricky
for learners to locate. The ‘s’ in the verb abuse is
pronounced as /z/, while in the noun form it is /s/.

Skills: Reading, Speaking, Writing Key:

1. nasal 6. neutralize
Language focus: Vocabulary 2. alter 7. mimic
3. hurdle 8. abuse
Materials needed: One copy of the 4. frustrated 9. diminish
worksheet per student 5. witness 10. flat

3. Comprehension check
1. Warmer
a. The answers given are only suggested answers
a. The purpose of this activity is to introduce the idea and students may correctly answer the questions
of some words being different in varieties of the in different ways, e.g., in item 3 they may say ‘He
same language. Indian English, which is discussed changed his name because he wanted to sound
in the article, tends to use British vocabulary, so American’, or similar.
Americans calling call centres in India may not
understand these words. There are hundreds of Key:
examples but these are some of the most common. 1. True
Note that Americans do use the word biscuit, but it 2. True
refers to a type of baked bread. In the UK, chips are 3. False. He changed his name to
what Americans call fries. Also, Americans usually sound more American because he
use the word gas when talking about gasoline or experienced discrimination.
petrol. When students have completed the warmer, 4. True
ask them if they know any other words that differ 5. False. It has been positive.
in the two varieties of English (e.g., apartment/flat; 6. True
sneakers/trainers; pants/trousers, etc.). 7. False. They had to relearn the pronunciation of
some words to sound American.
Key: 8. True
British English American English 9. False. He has mixed feelings about it.
pavement sidewalk 10. False. He thinks Sanas makes the speaker lose
tap faucet their emotion and politeness.
starter appetizer
petrol gasoline 4. Key language
area code zip code
a. Students could be asked to do this exercise
autumn fall
individually and then compare their answers in pairs.
handbag purse Ask students to refer back to the text to see the
cashpoint ATM words in context. Note that social can also be used
biscuit cookie with centre, but the solution given in the key is the
crisps potato chips only one that uses all six phrases.
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 The AI start-up erasing call-centre-worker accents: is it fighting bias – or
perpetuating it?
Level 2: Intermediate – Teacher’s notes
Key: You can add Indian English to the list but note that
1. e 4. c India is linguistically and culturally extremely diverse.
2. a 5. b Therefore, speakers of English as a first language in
3. f 6. d India will have very varied accents because they are
usually bilingual or multilingual.
5. Discussion
You can follow this task up with a discussion on
a. Allow students time to note down their ideas about the meaning of ‘correct’ or ‘native’ pronunciation in
each statement and encourage them to say why they English and what it means to a learner of English as a
agree or disagree with each one. second language.

6. In your own words

a.-b. This task might require some explanation. To start

with, you need to introduce the idea of the standard
American accent and Received Pronunciation in
British English to your students. You can do so by
having them to look at a dictionary, both British
and American English. Explain that, in both cases,
the pronunciation that is coded in the phonemic
script is a standard, generalized pronunciation, and
that most people in the two countries speak with
accents differing from these charts.

Then mention that English is spoken as the first language

in many countries around the world and in each of them
people have distinct accents. too. Then encourage
students to explore these differences by researching the
varieties of English in a chosen country. You can either
let them pick or assign them a country (accent) from the
list below. Students can also look for videos of people
speaking with these accents and try to pick out the
differences themselves.

Suggested countries and accents:

• Nigerian Standard English
• Scottish English (Standard Scottish English)
• Jamaican English (not Jamaican Patois)
• South African English
• Irish English
• Australian English
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