Chinese Undergraduate Students’ Attitudes Towards English Accents in an English-Medium Instruction Context

DOI

10.2991/978-2-494069-31-2_389How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Accent; Attitude; China; English-medium instruction; World English

Abstract

In response to the criticisms of the standardization of English caused by globalization, notions of World English and English as a lingua franca have been developed, emphasizing the co-existence of different English varieties. This has caused changes in non-native speakers’ attitudes towards English accents, especially in the English-medium instruction (EMI) context where the two notions are widely introduced. Therefore, the current study aims to investigate Chinese EMI learners’ attitudes towards English accents. Questionnaires and interviews were utilized to examine 50 Chinese EMI undergraduates’ preferences of different English accents and their attitudes towards their own accents. The results showed that when intelligibility was considered, most students perceived native English accents more positively and showed relatively negative attitudes towards non-native ones, which were more likely to hinder intelligibility. Although nearly half of the participants were satisfied with their accents, more than half still aspired to native-like accents. However, some students reported an attitude change caused by EMI and believed that attaining a native-like accent was unnecessary as long as the accent was intelligible. Accordingly, some implications can be provided for English as a second language (ESL) teaching, such as promoting EMI application and emphasizing intelligibility when teaching speaking.

Copyright

© 2022 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Jiayue Xiang
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/12/29
TI  - Chinese Undergraduate Students’ Attitudes Towards English Accents in an English-Medium Instruction Context
BT  - Proceedings of the 2022 6th International Seminar on Education, Management and Social Sciences (ISEMSS 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 3305
EP  - 3313
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-494069-31-2_389
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-494069-31-2_389
ID  - Xiang2022
ER  -