Why a good accent is important (again)

[Jamie (K)]

I teach English at a company where most of the German employees are from Friedrichshafen. Like other Germans, they have the problem of devoicing all vowels at the end of each word.

However, they also make voiceless stops (p, t, k) voiced at the beginnings of words (b, d, g). So, when they say "trucks", it sounds like they're saying "drugs". (Actually, it sounds more like "drucks", but since there's no English word "druck", we hear it as "drugs".)

This got very funny today when a man from that town said that he was negotiating with a company that supplies tubes. He called the firm "a potential dupe supplier."

He said something very different from what he meant.

[Torsten]

Jamie, you are right about the importance of correct pronunciation. What do you think, how much time do English teachers spend time on improving their students' accent? What kind of methods and materials do they use to teach phonetics?
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[Jamie (K)]