Students’ Attitudes to English Accents in Four Schools in Southern Sweden

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to report on students´ attitudes and their awareness towards different English accents. With changes in the latest Swedish syllabus for English (Lgr11), the aim is no longer to sound in a specific way by speaking with a certain accent. This has been the case since 2000, but the Nativeness principle is still powerful. However, we discuss that a clear pronunciation is important for students and teachers a requisite for being understood and avoiding confusion. Students in four different schools, secondary and upper secondary schools, took part in our research by answering a questionnaire. We found that many students were aware of different accents, but also that students preferred the Inner Circle accents with AmE and BrE being the most popular ones. Also, we found a difference between secondary and upper secondary students where teacher influence was more important to the former and personal preferences to the latter. Keywords: Accent, pronunciation, comprehension, intelligibility, ESL, EIL, EFL, ELF, English as a Global Language