Perennial Language Learners or Competent Language Users: An Investigation of International Students’ Attitudes towards Their Own and Native English Accents

Abstract

English is widely used as a global language. The traditional monolithic model of English has been challenged as the development of World Englishes (WE) and English as a lingua franca (ELF) paradigms challenge the ownership of English. With this newly emerging status quo, English language teaching (ELT) should also recognize the diversity and dynamism of English. This article discusses students’ attitudes towards their own and native English accents, and describes the influence of English accents in ELT. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews with nine international students from Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka who were studying at a university in Southern Thailand. The derived data were analysed using qualitative content analysis. The findings revealed that most students still perceived their accents as being deficient, and they believed that native speakers’ English accents were the norm of English use and the ultimate learning goal. Thus, entrenched native ideology was still persistent among these students. The article also provides some implications for pronunciation teaching from a WE and ELF framework with the Teaching of Pronunciation for Intercultural Communication (ToPIC). It is hoped that an awareness of English as a global language could be recognized, and ToPIC could be applied to ELT in more contexts to reflect the global status of English.