Research Methods PSY 2061
GEMA Online® Journal of Language Studies 151
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A Quantitative Study of Chinese Learners’ Identities as Reflected in
Their Attitudes Toward English Accents
Yan Huang
a
violinhy@qq.com
Department of Foreign Languages,
Sichuan University of Science and Engineering
&
Asia-Europe Institute,
University of Malaya
Azirah Hashim
azirahh@um.edu.my
Asia-Europe Institute,
University of Malaya
ABSTRACT
Once an asset owned exclusively by native English speakers (NESs) in inner circle, the native
English speaking norms, specifically the standard varieties of British and American English,
have been taken for granted as models for non-native English speakers (NNESs) in outer and
expanding circles to imitate and approximate to. But this paradigm is under severe attack given
the fact that people who use English as a lingua franca (ELF) have far outnumbered NESs. This
paper aims to show how Chinese tertiary-level second language (L2) learners perceive different
English accents and how their perceptions were related to their identities within the framework
of ELF. By means of an online questionnaire survey, data from 574 English major students
were retrieved and analysed with the assistance of SPSS 20.0 and Nvivo 11.0. The current
study focuses on ambivalence in respondents’ attitudes toward different English accents. On
the one hand, there was an obvious bias towards NES norms and accents and a strong bias
against Chinese-accented English and other NNES accents; on the other hand, there was an
emergence of linguistic rights and learner identity experienced by some respondents, which
demonstrated itself in highlighting pragmaticity in communication, endorsing L1-accented
Chinese identity, and questioning benchmark roles accorded to NES accent standards. The
implication of the current study is to acknowledge an urgency of addressing the controversies
between the linguistic reality and the prescriptive standards, and between the respondents’
hidden appeals for projecting their identity via L1-accented English and highly-acclaimed NES
accent models.
Keywords: attitude; accent; identity; English as a lingua franca; mainland China
INTRODUCTION
“Language attitudes permeate our lives” (Garrett, 2010) in a low-profile, lack-of-conscious but
tenacious way. Its research has maintained momentum for several decades. The theoretical
significance of studying language attitudes may be indicated in two ways. First, research in
language attitudes has the capacity in determining how people perceive others in accordance
with their linguistic feature. For example, there is surprisingly an exact match of people’s
prediction of the subjects’ personality based on the subjects’ traits of voices (Allport & Cantril,
1934; Pear, 1931), and a bias towards a language variety or a dialect out of the social status
a (Main & corresponding author)
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and educational level of its speaker (Lambert et al., 1960; Lippi-Green, 1994; Tucker &
Lambert, 1969). Second, such studies also have the potential in predicting people’s behavioural
disposition, for example, attitudes toward self, the native language group and the target
language group were tested positively correlated with attained proficiency, especially in ESL
context (Chihara & Oller, 1978; Oller, Hudson, & Liu, 1977; Zeinivand, Azizifar, & Gowhary,
2015). More specifically, favourable attitudes lead to more willingness to accept different
accent varieties (Chiba, Matsuura, & Yamamoto, 1995; Dewaele & McCloskey, 2015) as well
as chances to communicate in a foreign language context (Yashima, 2002; Yashima et al.,
2004).
Accent most usually refers to phonological and intonation features which convey the
characteristics of distinctively geographic and social influence. Ever since the unravelling of
the intricate links between voice and stereotyped personalities, it has become a field of interest
in language attitude research. A string of empirical studies have been initiated to investigate
people’s perceptions of different accents in different demographical contexts (Chiba et al.,
1995; Dalton et al., 1997; El-Dash & Busnardo, 2001; Hansen, Zampini, & Cunningham, 2019;
Luk & Lin, 2006; Rivers, 2011; Tokumoto & Shibata, 2011). Respondents in these studies
were reported of displaying unanimous preference for native English accents, especially
American and British English accents, while bearing reservations in reference to non-native
English accents where English is used either as a second language or a foreign language. Other
studies (Bian, 2009; Fang, 2015; Sung, 2014, 2016; Y. Wang, 2012) have reported emergent
questioning of dogged conformity to NES norms and standards and a growing inclination to
project people’s special identity by means of their L1-accented English. Accent has been
labelled as the last publicly acceptable form of discrimination (Lippi-Green, 1997) and it
becomes an issue receiving unprecedented attention against the backdrop that English has been
used as a lingua franca accommodating variegated communication needs for different L1s
speakers, and in the meantime they have been offered a myriad of identity options in ELF
communication (Sung, 2014).
ELF defined by Seidlhofer (2011) is “any use of English among speakers of different
first languages for whom English is the communicative medium of choice, and often the only
option” and for those speakers when using English they don’t think about the United States or
England, they only think about the need to communicate. This realisation is very significant,
especially in the field of English language teaching (ELT) in that the NES norms, specifically
the prescriptive standards of British and American English varieties, once taken-for-granted
models for NNESs in the outer and expanding circles to imitate and approximate to have for
the first time been brought under attack. The salience of accent which has been reincarnated
with the most prominent feature of a particular spoken language and a powerful marker of
identity in speech, is even higher in ELF context than in communication among NESs (Jenkins,
2007). Accent variety has been advocated as a means to express L2 speakers’ identity (Jenkins,
2000, 2007; Lindemann, Litzenberg, & Subtirelu, 2014; Walker, 2010) and any form of
imposition of modifying L2 speakers’ accent against their desires is an act of undermining their
identity (Dalton & Seidlhofer, 1994).
China, thanks to its enormous number of English learners and English users
(approximately 400 million in total), becomes a big player in deciding the development of the
English language. Due to the influence of traditional culture and philosophy which lays
excessive prominence on standards and correctness, China, being labeled as a “norm-dependent”
country in Kachruvian term, fully exemplifies its exonormativity in its allegiance and
conformity to English as a Native Language (ENL) norms. This situation is compounded by
the government and administrators in terms of the enactment of language policies, and long-
term exposure to native speaker materials. Things do not change significantly notwithstanding
a progress in both people’s evaluation of the newly-emerged localised variety of English and
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the general consensus on its legitimacy in academic world (Gao, 2014; Graddol, 2006; He,
2015; Hu, 2004; Jiang & Du, 2003), and the accessibility of Lingua Franca Core (Jenkins, 2000)
which prioritises intelligibility and attainability in both interethnic communication and in ELT
pedagogy. The prerequisite, admittedly, for any attempt at bringing changes to the ongoing
language pedagogy and language policy making is to make sure that people’s attitudes are in
favour of those changes.
Attitude research on different English accents in the context of China so far, however,
has not received adequate attention. Even if in rare cases, studies of this kind were either
conducted under the framework of SLA where English has long been regarded as a foreign
language with NES norms its benchmark standards and NESs’ recognition its ultimate purpose
(He & Li, 2009; Xu, Wang, & Case, 2010), or conducted in contexts where the lingua franca
role of English has long been established (e.g. Hong Kong, in Sung, 2014, 2016) or highly-
acclaimed (e.g. Beijing, in Bian, 2009; well-developed coasted provinces, in Fang, 2015, 2016;
Beijing, in X. Zheng & Gao, 2017). The current study is to complement the research findings
obtained by the aforementioned studies. By setting its research site at an inland provincial
university in mainland China, this study intends to investigate to what extent participants’
attitudes toward different English accents were under the influence of the emerging ELF
environment where there was a growing percentage and diversity of international faculty
members and students and the use of English language per se has transformed from course-,
exam- and employment-driven to communication- and pragmatic purpose-initiated in that case.
To be more specific, the current study as one component of a longitudinal project aims to
address the following research questions:
What are Chinese L2 learners’ attitudes toward English accents of their own and of other NES and NNES groups in the framework of ELF?
And why do they bear these attitudes?
How do participants’ identities intersect with their accent perceptions?
METHODOLOGY
What is reported in this paper is findings from a questionnaire survey, the initial phase of a
one-year longitudinal research project which aims to investigate and explore Chinese tertiary-
level L2 learners’ attitude changes toward different English accents, and their identity changes
in line with their changing attitudes. In general, data retrieved through close-ended questions
and rank ordering open-ended questions were processed through SPSS 20.0 which assists in
displaying descriptive statistics and obtaining inferential results. Specifically, the Chi-square
test was employed to investigate whether age, gender, grade, duration of English learning and
experiences abroad impacted dependent variables in the survey, such as the way they evaluated
different English accents, etc. The t-test and one-way ANOVA were also adopted to test the
existence of any possible statistically significant differences between or among different groups
of respondents. Results from open-ended questions in this survey were categorised and
analysed with the help of Nvivo 11.0.
PARTICIPANTS
The first phase of this research project involved the total population of English major students
in the research site. Justifications for selecting English major students in this study are two-
fold. For one thing, English major students in China compared with their non-English major
counterparts have far more chances to be exposed to practices and experiences related to the
use of English language which would substantially facilitate individual learners’ understanding
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of the roles and functions of English language. For another, English major students are more
likely than non-English major students to choose to be language teachers, in particular English
language teachers in the context of China. This means that their personal perceptions of and
beliefs in English language are of high stakes in that these perceptions and beliefs, either biased
or unbiased, would have enduring effect on their potential students in the future. And the
situation would not dramatically change even if they opt out teaching profession in that they
still incline to choose professions related to their major, English.
DATA COLLECTION
Data were collected from a comprehensive university situated in Sichuan, a province in
southwestern part of mainland China. Enrollments into this university are students from
different provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions across China, except Hong Kong,
Macao and Taiwan. A point to note is that at the time of the research there was a substantial
increase in the number of international students and faculty members at the research site, whose
presentation makes English a major auxiliary language or lingua franca during encounters
between those international students and faculty members and between them and Chinese
students.
Data reported in this paper were retrieved from an on-line questionnaire survey which
was administered in Chinese (see Appendix A for its English version). This survey, the very
preliminary step of the whole project, intends to uncover how participants perceive different
English accents and how different accent perceptions relate to their identities. It consists of 29
close-ended questions (including 2 rank ordering open-ended questions) and 2 open-ended
questions. Specifically, it was divided into four major parts, with each part targeting a specific
theme. In particular, the first part (from Q1 to Q6) which is adapted from Norton (2000), is
meant to elicit the respondent’s biographical profile, which also serves as independent variables
in statistic tests. The second part (from Q7 to Q14) adapted mainly from Fang (2015) is
designed to elicit their understandings of and attitudes toward different English accents
(including English accents of their own). The third part (from Q15 to Q31) is further divided
into two subcategories, in which Q15 to Q22 also adapted from Fang (2015) address the issue
of accent inclination, and Q23 to Q30 which were adapted from Jenkins (2000) address accent
acceptance scales. It is ended with Q31, an open-ended question eliciting comments on the
survey per se or participants’ understandings related to English accent.
To counter the greatest challenge, low response rate in questionnaire survey, the
researcher turned most of the survey items (except Q5 and Q31) into compulsory questions.
This means that respondents were unable to submit their questionnaires unless they completed
all compulsory questions; secondly, the researcher also sought an opportunity to introduce the
necessary essentials of the research project to the participants prior to the formal
commencement of the research. Participants were advised to fill in the survey wherever and
whenever they felt most convenient thanks to the respondent-friendly nature of e-survey
platform within a one-month time limit.
The retrieved raw data were then firstly translated from the participants’ mother tongue,
Chinese, to the target language, English, which was followed by data screening and data
cleaning so as to spot and correct errors and inaccuracies. Consequently, the data, after
necessary elimination, were reduced from 599 to 574 valid questionnaires. In addition,
participants’ responses to Q5, Q7 and Q12 were reduced (see Appendix B) to a much more
manageable size while maintaining original information. Besides research ethics and integrity
were always major concerns of this study. The researcher has obtained ethical approval (Ref.
No.: UM.TNC2/UMREC-249) from her affiliation prior to the start of the research.
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DATA ANALYSIS
Both descriptive statistics and inferential statistics were adopted with the assistance of SPSS
20.0 in accordance with the research purposes and the categories of the retrieved data. The
basic demographic information of the participants is displayed in Appendix C. Briefly, the
majority of the participants (N=391) fell in the 16 to 20 year age group (accounting for 68.1%),
and were skewed to the female side (87.8%) which is analogous to the typical features of
English major students in China, that is the enrollment of female students is usually several
times more than that of male students. The number of first (N=162) and second year
participants (N=167) were slightly more than third (N=132) and fourth year participants
(N=113), and a considerable number of them (63.2%) began their English study from primary
schools. In addition, there were way less participants with any overseas experiences (N=37)
than participants without overseas experiences (N=537).
Qualitative data refers to responses to the open-ended questions, Q11, a compulsory
item, and Q31, an optional question, in the questionnaire. Qualitative data were firstly
translated from Chinese to English and then coded into different categories and analysed with
the assistance of Nvivo 11.0.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Responses were combined and centered around three major themes: attitudes toward English
accents and pronunciation teaching, accent inclination, and accent acceptance. In what follows
efforts were made to report the relevant results in thematic units and possible interpretations
were accordingly provided by the researcher.
ATTITUDES TOWARD ENGLISH ACCENTS AND PRONUNCIATION TEACHING
The first thematic group can be further divided into four subcategories: attitudes toward English
accents that respondents are most familiar with, respondents most prefer and respondents most
aspire to have; English accent evaluation; attitudes toward respondents’ own English accent
and beliefs in pronunciation teaching.
ENGLISH ACCENTS RESPONDENTS ARE MOST FAMILIAR, MOST PREFER AND MOST ASPIRE TO HAVE
Figures 1 to 3 display responses to Q7, Q12 and Q13, that is, different English accents that
respondents were most familiar, most preferred and most aspired to. In each case, similar to
most findings, NES, in particular, British English accent and American English accent were
still perceived as the top two most familiar and the most preferred and aspired English accents,
the combination of which in each case claims nearly 90 percent of the total population of the
respondents.
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FIGURE 1. English Accents Respondents Most Familiar
FIGURE 2. English Accent Respondents Most Prefer
FIGURE 3. English Accents Respondents Most Aspire to Have
The unswervingly dominant position assumed by NES accents, in particular, British
and American English accents found in this survey, is comparable to a group of findings (c.f.
Fang, 2015; He & Li, 2009; He & Zhang, 2010; Hu, 2004; Jenkins, 2007, 2009; Sa'd &
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Modirkhameneh, 2015; Sung, 2016; Y. Wang, 2012), and it came as no surprise and can be
accounted for by the following interpretations. First and foremost, a majority of the respondents
in this survey albeit their common identity as language learners, confessed honestly that they
were ignorant of other English accents apart from the top two “Standard English accents”
which as revealed in their open comments were stipulated by their English teachers or
syllabuses as the default point of references ever since their first contact of English study. Even
if some of them were exposed to other English accents, the most possible scenario for them
was either to regard the other different English accents, such as the mentioning of Indian
English, Japanese English, and Pakistani English by the respondents in Q31, as negative
examples to further boost their beliefs in the pursuit of NES accents, or to treat them as cases
of exceptions which from the respondents’ perspectives were unlikely to be encountered in the
future. Their perception is understandable given that no one made this endeavor to inform them
of the fact that the population of NNES has outnumbered NES population for long against the
backdrop of SLA-ideology-prevalent ELT in China, which corroborates Wang’s (2012)
suggestion that the knowledge of English globalization should be popularised in China.
Another possible interpretation of this trend points to factors beyond language. That
Britain introduced English to the entire world through its military prowess during colonial
period, and America successively facilitated the global permeation of English in post-colonial
era via its economic, political, cultural and technological capabilities (Phillipson, 1992) came
as unquestionable justifications for its dominant position over other NNES English varieties on
the part of the respondents. Evidences such as “Britain is the birth place of English.”, “My ears
are pregnant listening to Americans speaking English.”, “The ultimate purpose for me to study
English is to go to America to experience its culture.” etc. were found recurrent in the
respondents’ open comments. The last but not the least important justification is because of the
influence of technology-based mass-media. English is no longer an academic subject to the
respondents but highly accessible in their daily life, thinking about the entertainment industry,
the skyrocketing number of imported Hollywood blockbusters, American and British TV and
radio programmes into Chinese market. The most likely outcome is captured fully by a
respondent’s comment,
S392: My most favourite leisure time activities are listening to American pop music, and watching
mostly American TV dramas. I really enjoy the plots and the characters, and I would intentionally
imitate their accent, their way of speaking English and even their body gestures.
But what is new and inspiring in the findings, after close examination of the three bar
charts, are the following three additional points. Firstly, the top two English accents, i.e. British
English accent and American English accent, were still the most exposed English accents in
the case of the respondents. However, there seems a growing trend of exposures to a wider
range of different English accents, such as China English accent (N=50), Indian English accent
(N=9), Japanese English accent (N=7), Australian English accent (N=2), Canadian English
accent and Southeast English accent (N=1 respectively), which albeit the small percentage
indicated a growing language awareness on the part of the respondents in the wake of frequent
contacts with other English varieties (Seidlhofer, 2002, 2011). It is also a question of interest
if any ensuing exposure to different NNES accents would substantially change the way they
perceive NES accents, which is to be tested within the domain of upcoming qualitative research.
Secondly, 551 (96%) respondents expressed preference for either British English accent
or American English accent; in other words, 23 respondents held other preferences, which were
supplemented by their open comments in Q31. For example, some respondents made the
following remarks:
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S27: For English accents, I personally think that the first requirement is to be able to express clearly
and fluently and being standard comes second.
S544: When I learned English from primary school, I was exposed to British and American English
accents. When I arrived at the university, I also met a variety of accented Englishes, and I felt that
it doesn’t matter. I may not understand it at first, but after I got used to it, understanding is not a
problem. So I don’t think accent should be a reason for not being able to understand.
Themes that can be instilled from the comments above are pragmaticity, clarity,
intelligibility, fluency and familiarity, which kept recurring sometimes independently,
sometimes along with the endorsement given to either of the top two most preferred English
accents in the respondents’ comments. It indicates either ambivalence of attitudes toward
standard English accents (c.f. Jenkins, 2005) or questioning of the unquestionable status
accorded to standard English accents on the part of the respondents, which becomes even more
evident when it comes to evaluate their own English accents.
Thirdly, there was a moderate drop in the number of respondents who aspired to standard
English accents in comparison with the combined number of respondents who claimed
preference to British and American English accents. To be specific, 21 of them chose to
maintain their own English accents, but it is worth taking note of the particular features of the
respondents’ own English accents that have actually led to such a decision. Another 19 of them
opted for other English accents, which were specified in addition as follows:
S373: As long as people in other English-speaking countries or people speaking English can
understand my meaning, it is not necessary to obtain a standard English accent.
S432: I’d like to retain some of my own cultural characteristics on the basis of the standard English
accent when speaking in English.
In brief, responses to Q7, Q12 and Q13 display an obvious bias in familiarity,
preference and aspiration to standard English accents, in particular, British and American
English accents. What’s noticeable in the meantime is the growing number of English varieties
the respondents exposed to, and other options besides standard English accents the respondents
preferred and aspired to have.
EVALUATION OF ENGLISH ACCENTS
Findings from Q8 and Q9 were comparable to that of Jenkins’ (2007) and Fang’s (2015).
Though less respondents (N=221, 38.5%) approved of the claim that some English accents are
more prestigious than others (Q8), more than half of them (N=317, 55.2%) held the belief that
some English accents are easier to understand (Q9) (See Table 1 and 2).
TABLE 1. Whether some English accents are more prestigious than others?
Frequency Percent Valid Percent
Valid
No.
No idea.
Yes.
Total
221
177
176
574
38.5
30.8
30.7
100.0
38.5
30.8
30.7
100.0
TABLE 2. Whether some English accents are easier to understand?
Frequency Percent Valid Percent
Valid
No.
No idea.
Yes.
Total
90
167
317
574
15.7
29.1
55.2
100.0
15.7
29.1
55.2
100.0
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Justifications were provided along with the “Yes/No” options. Primary reasons
underneath their perception that some English accents are not more prestigious than others
(N=221) were explicated in the following remarks, with key words or phrases underlined:
S20: The preference for different English accents is rather personal, and there’s nothing to do with
superiority.
S42: The purpose of language learning is for the sake of mutual communication and mutual
understanding. As long as my thoughts and expressions can clearly reach the other party, my English
accent is a good English accent.
S124: English accent itself does not have superiority, but people who speak with it have.
S155: I think different English accents are caused by different culture and geographical locations.
An accent has a unique taste in that area, and there is no hierarchy existing in them.
In comparison, justifications provided to support the claim that some
Englishaccents are more prestigious than others (N=176) were mostly expressed in
phrases, recurrent ones such as “sounds comfortable”, “sounds formal and official”,
“more elegant”, “more clear and intelligible”, “pure and authentic”, “standard”,
“international and efficient”. A number of complete explanations facilitate clarifying
their inclination, for example,
S78: Authentic English accent is better than accented Englishes, and English with accents will be
laughed at by others.
S186: Standard English accent will reflect a person’s identity, knowledge and education, and it will
make the listener hear clearly and comfortably.
S201: The current English textbooks are biased towards British English accent, so does the audio
pronunciation heard during the exams, which means my perception is influenced by the current
environment.
Reasons retrieved from the respondents’ further comments on whether some English
accents are easier to understand than others (Q10) were interestingly corresponding, that is,
reasons for the respondents to vote against the claim are the very reasons for them to vote for
it, for example,
S157: The expressed content is the same, it is not which one is easier to understand, but which one
is more familiar, then that one is easier to understand.
The latter part of the comment became the major reason for their support of the
claim,
S47: The most recognised English accents in the world today are British and American English
accents…Together with the cultural output of the United Kingdom and the United States, these two
accents became the most often-heard English accents, and undoubtedly, they became the most
familiar English accents compared with others, so they are easier to understand.
What should not be neglected in the two tables are the significant numbers of respondents
(N=176, 167 respectively) who answered “No idea”. The first justification of their option is
due to the plain fact that a considerable number of them, especially the first graders, had no
such exposures to different varieties of English accents and British and American English
accents are their only accessible sources of English varieties. Another possible interpretation,
in line with comments provided in Q31, is that they did not care about which English accent
they took so long as they could manage smooth conversations with people involved.
Chi-square tests were conducted to investigate whether age, gender, grade, duration of
English learning and experiences abroad exerted any impact on the way the respondents
evaluated different English accents, in which age and gender were found to have statistically
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significant impact on how they responded Q8, p=0.029, 0.038, albeit the effect size was rather
small, phi=0.111, 0.107 respectively. Grade, for another, was tested significantly related to
responses to Q9, p=0.018, also with minor effect size given phi=0.100.
In brief, despite the fact that NES accents, in particular, American and British English
accents were on the top of the pyramid, they were not the default answers when it comes to
superiority, which indicates that the respondents were more likely to identify with language for
language’s sake, and which for another corroborates Jenkins’ (2007) finding that L2 learners
might desire NES but not NES-like identity.
ATTITUDES TOWARD RESPONDENTS’ OWN ENGLISH ACCENTS
Respondents in Q10 were expected to describe their own English accents, and in Q11 to
evaluate their own English accents against 5 point-rating scales. Responses to Q11 were
displayed in Table 3 which shows a centralized tendency (SD=0.909) on the part of the
respondents in providing generally a statistically negative evaluation (mean=2.72, minimum=1,
maximum=5) of their own English accents.
TABLE 3. How do you feel about your own English accent?
Frequency Percent Valid Percent
Valid
Not satisfied at all
Not very satisfied
Uncertain
Satisfied
Very satisfied
Total
27
250
159
131
7
574
4.7
43.6
27.7
22.8
1.2
100.0
4.7
43.6
27.7
22.8
1.2
100.0
Specifically, close to one half (48.3%) of the respondents were not satisfied with their
own English accents. In contrast, less than a quarter (24%) of them felt satisfied with their
current English accents; while the rest, more than a quarter (27.7%) did not provide clear
evaluation in terms of their own English accents and chose “Uncertain”.
Comments retrieved by Q10, a compulsory open-ended question, provided fresh
clarifications for the above-observed statistical trend. “Accent” (mentioned 263 times out of
574 responses), “English” (194 times), “standard” (152 times), “Chinese” (139 times) and
“mixed” (74 times) were the top five words with the highest frequencies running exact matches
via Nvivo 11.0. Follow-up enquiries discovered that more than one third of the respondents
described their own English accents as with “Chinese English accent”, which in most cases
was held negatively by the respondents as an indicator of failed English language learners;
responses relevant to “standard” were mostly expressed in a negative way, such as “not
standard”, “not quite standard”, or “not standard at all”; responses related to “mixed” were
also interesting in that it either indicated a mix of British and American English accents or a
mix of British, American and Chinese English accents. Even if in random cases that some
respondents expressed satisfaction with their own English accents, they would in the meantime
add that they would strive to sound as close as possible like a NES, which indicates a sense of
ambivalence and inferiority in attitude or an identity conflict experienced by some respondents.
On the one hand they were eager to project their “Ought-to” Self by identifying with their own
current English accents; on the other they were tormented by their “Ideal” Self which forced
them to identify with NES accents (Dörnyei, 2009; Ushioda & Dörnyei, 2009).
It is not difficult to come up with a sound justification for this rather negative and
contradictory evaluation of their own English accents on the part of the respondents. As Zheng
(2013) observed that most students in China still label themselves as “perennial and error-prone
ENL learners” other than rightful English language users, not surprisingly NES accent models
are regarded as their ultimate goals of their endeavors and their default reference points albeit
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“unrealistic and unattainable in their locale” (Ibid.). In other words, English in this case was
still perceived as a foreign language by a considerable majority of the respondents, though it is
against the fact that English for now has been widely employed as an auxiliary language, a
lingua franca, possessing regional characteristics and emotive values (Hashim, Kaur & Kuang,
2016), and it also blindfolds the emerging ELF reality at the research site where a growing
proportion of communications by means of English were conducted between NNESs in the
absence of NESs. In view of this, it is no wonder that the respondents’ mother tongue was
perceived as a negative transfer impeding their progress as successful foreign language (FL)
learners.
Chi-square tests were conducted but it was found that there was no significant impact
exerted by the independent variables on the way the respondents perceived their own English
accents. But interestingly descriptive statistics show that a difference exists between
respondents with and without overseas experiences, in which respondents with overseas
experiences tend to hold more favorable opinions on their own English accents (mean=3.38)
than respondents without overseas experiences (mean=2.68). An independent t-test was
therefore conducted and found that it was statistically different between students with and
without overseas experiences in how they evaluated their own English accents, F=1.065,
p=0.000, and the effect size, given Cohen’s d=0.825, is large. In similar vein, a one-way
ANOVA reported a significant difference among respondents in different grades in the way
they evaluate their own English accent, F=4.593, p=0.003, but with a small effect size (f=0.147).
What is indicated in this finding is comparable to Chiba et al.’s (1995) and Dewaele and
McCloskey’s (2015), in that when the respondents had more exposure to different varieties or
variations of English, they tended to have positive views of NNES accents, including accents
of their own.
In brief, Q10 and Q11 report a generally negative trend in the way the respondents
perceived their own English accents. NES accents were the benchmark for their evaluation of
their own English accents and their L1 influenced-English accents were treated pejoratively
and were on top of the list to be ridded off. This evaluation was independent of the effect of
age, gender, grade, duration of English study and overseas experiences, albeit statistical
differences exist between respondents with and without experiences abroad, and among
respondents in different grades.
BELIEFS IN PRONUNCIATION TEACHING
Q14 was designed as a multiple-choice question which means that the respondents were
permitted to tick more than one option as long as they thought the option they ticked was
reasonable and acceptable. Q14 thus became the only item in this survey that the number of
the ticked options was larger than the number of the respondents (see TABLE 4). Note that
percentage and valid percentage were calculated against the total population of the respondents
other than the total number of the ticked options.
TABLE 4. English accent(s) teachers should teach
English accents teachers should teach Frequency Percent Valid percent
Valid
A 545 94.9 94.9
B 50 8.7 8.7
C 47 8.2 8.2
D 32 5.6 5.6
1.7 E 10 1.7
Total 684 A. Standard English accent (British, American, Australian) B. China English accent
C. The English accent(s) the teacher is familiar with
D. A mix of native and non-native English accent
E. Others, please specify
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Out of 684 overall options retrieved from the respondents, 545 respondents chose
standard English accent as the most satisfactory pronunciation model teachers were supposed
to teach students, which is in line with the previous findings in this survey study, and which is
for another revealing the strong conformity to standards and correctness stemming from the
Chinese administrative level (c.f. He & Zhang, 2010; Kirkpatrick & Xu, 2002; W. Wang, 2015;
Y. Zheng, 2013). For another, however, 139 options were dedicated to other English accent
models, which once again indicates a growing language awareness and emerging questioning
of dogged adherence to standard English norms on the part of the respondents. Correlation tests
were conducted and there seemed no effect of the independent variables on the choices of
different English accent models to be taught made by the respondents.
In brief, NES or standard English accent maintains its momentum as the most preferred
English accent models to be taught from the perspectives of the respondents. Noticeable also
is attention received by other English accent models, such as China English accent. Inferential
statistic tests found that there was no relation between the independent variables and the
respondents’ preferred pronunciation models.
ACCENT INCLINATION
Question items (Q15 to Q22) in this part were intended to retrieve responses in how the
respondents identified themselves with different accent situations. The preliminary descriptive
statistics in reference to their different accent inclination was captured in the following table.
TABLE 5. Accent inclination
Statements Mean SD
Q15: I feel happy when I find my English accent is more like native speakers. 5.25 1.079
Q16: When someone cannot understand me when I speak English, I begin to doubt my
English accent. 4.06 1.472
Q17: I feel satisfied with my English accent as well as my Chinese accent. 2.99 1.267
Q18: I do not feel satisfied with my English accent and would strive to sound like a
native speaker of English. 4.30 1.308
Q19: I feel satisfied with my own English accent but would still like to strive to sound
like a native speaker of English. 4.04 1.451
Q20: I feel satisfied with my own English accent and would like to keep it. 2.96 1.310
Q21: I feel happy if someone mistakenly regards that I have a native speaker accent of
English. 4.97 1.254
Q22: When I speak English, I am happy to be identified as a Chinese speaker. 2.51 1.207
What can be obtained from the preliminary investigation is as follows: Q15 has the
highest mean score (5.25) and the lowest SD value (1.079); in contrast, Q22 has the lowest
mean score (2.51). More interestingly, statements centered around maintaining their own
English accent were unexceptionally obtained lower means, with an overall average mean score
(Q17, Q20, Q22) as 2.82, an overall average SD 1.26; contrastingly, statements revolved
around changing their own English accents so as to approach native English speakers, with the
only exception Q16 which will be explicated later in detail, obtained much higher mean scores,
with an overall average mean score 4.52, and SD 1.31.
The results indicated that most respondents felt very much reluctant to project their
Chinese identity via Chinese-accented English, and they were in other words experiencing a
“subtractive identity change” (Gao et al., 2005; 2007). Additionally, Q16 in Gao et al.’s (2005;
2007) exploratory research, was categorised as related to self-confidence change which means
changes in how the respondents perceive their own competence, and is essentially independent
of “cultural identities”. The comparatively high mean score (4.06) and the moderate SD value
(1.472) suggest that a noticeable number of respondents agreed that their self-confidence was
correlated positively with their English accent. Q18 and Q19 for another indicate “split change”
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in Gao et al.’s (2005; 2007) term which indicates an identity conflict brought by “struggle
between languages and cultures”, which is further evidenced in the respondents’ open
comments,
S328: I think my English is of Chinese accent, and I don’t feel uncomfortable with it, but I still want
to say smooth English like a native speaker.
Split change is treated as an “intermediate phase” before learners “develop other types of
identity changes” (Gao et al., 2005; 2007). High mean scores retrieved from the two items
indicate that a proportion of the respondents underwent an obvious split change which would
eventually lead them to other identity changes.
Chi-square tests were conducted to investigate the possible factors influencing
respondents’ accent inclination. Age, gender, grade, duration of English study and experiences
abroad were tested of having no statistically significant impact on accent inclination.
Additionally, no significant differences were found between gender, different age groups, with
or without overseas experiences, or among different grades or different duration of English
study.
In brief, respondents were inclined to hold negative perspectives to statements which
give positive description of their own English accent but positive feedbacks to statements
which encourage them to modify their own English accent in reference to native English
speakers. There is reluctance on the part of the respondents in projecting their Chinese identity
in speaking English and their self-confidence was tested to be correlated positively with their
English accent. No significant inferential statistics has so far been obtained at this stage.
ACCENT ACCEPTANCE
Question items in this part incorporated a number of well-attested items, such as Q23, Q26,
Q27 and Q30, were adapted from Jenkins’ (2000). Those items refer to cases that were proved
to be of having no significant hindrance in successful communication. Other question items
were designed in line with pronunciation features exclusive to Chinese English learners (Chang,
1987; Zhang & Zhao, 2014). The purpose of the inclusion of this part is to test to what extent
the respondents were willing to give their endorsement to those deviant forms of English
pronunciations. Table 6 captures the discrete mean scores and SD values of each item, and
Table 7 displays the overall statistic results.
TABLE 6. Accent acceptance
Mean SD
Q23: “think”read as /ʃink/ or /sink/ 2.67 1.464
Q24: “live”read as /liːv/ 4.20 1.460
Q25: “nice”read as /laɪs/ 2.66 1.624
Q26: “red paint" read as /reb peɪnt/ 2.51 1.549
Q27: “these”read as /diːz/ 1.81 1.189
Q28: “vegetable”read as /ˈwedʒtəbəl/ 2.92 1.559
Q29: “product”read as /ˈpɒdʌk/ 2.60 1.495
Q30: “command”read as /kəˈmɑːnde/ 3.06 1.509
TABLE 7. Overall accent acceptance
N Min Max Mean SD
Accent acceptance
Valid N
574
574
1 6 2.805 .959
Findings from this part rendered the most interesting results and were found in stark
contrast to that of Jenkins’(2000, 2002). If interpreting from a general level, the overall mean
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score for deviant accent acceptance is low (mean=2.805), and it is agreed upon by a majority
of the respondents (SD=0.959). Discretely, Q27, whose way of pronunciation is so widespread
that it has been long attested to of rendering no difficulty or hindrance in conversations,
receives the lowest mean score as well as the lowest SD value. This means that a considerable
number of the respondents would have paramount difficulty as listeners once encountering
people with such accent and the possibilities of bringing the conversation to a breakdown are
high as they as listeners fail to accomplish their due part (Smith, 1992), which is further
evidenced in their Q31 open comments,
S42: Whenever I communicated with Pakistani students, I couldn’t understand them. Their local
accent was too strong, and their pronunciation was not authentic, which made me very upset.
S184: … There was once a Polish oral English teacher who made me really uncomfortable when in
his class. I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about, and felt that his English was so much
different from what I learnt….
Surprisingly, the unexpectedly high mean score (mean=4.20) received by Q24 indicates
that considering the moderate SD value (SD=1.460), a noticeable portion of the respondents
downplayed the significance of the maintenance of contrast between long and short vowels
(Jenkins, 2000) which was stipulated clearly about the possible conversation breakdowns if
violated.
To further investigate possible effect exerted by the independent variables, Chi-square
tests were again conducted but with no statistically significant results being found.
Nevertheless, significant difference was found in different age groups in how they accepted
accents deviant from standard versions, F=0.088, p=0.004, but with rather small effect size,
given Cohen’s d=0.261. Statistically significant difference was also observed among different
grades, F=10.572, p=0.000, but with moderate effect size, f=0.228.
In brief, the respondents tended to hold negative perceptions toward the deviant forms of
English pronunciations, including a number of well-attested forms of pronunciation rendering
no extra difficulty in understanding. Some provisional interpretations are therefore considered,
such as loopholes existing in pronunciation teaching in China. In specific, one possible
interpretation is that English language instructors failed to expose language learners to the
English language reality happening around the world, which risks Chinese English language
learners failing to accomplish successful conversations. Another likely interpretation is that
English language instructors failed to underline the core phonetic symbols which guarantee
successful conversations and prevent communication breakdowns.
CONCLUSION
The questionnaire survey, an initial phase of a longitudinal research, reports at a preliminary
level different attitudes toward different English accents and to what extent accents intersect
with identities on the part of the Chinese tertiary-level English language learners. The current
study reports an obvious bias towards NES or standard English accents, in particular, British
and American English accents, which assumed the roles as the most familiar, the most preferred,
and the most aspired and also as the default point of reference. On the other hand, there exists
a strong bias against Chinese-accented English and other NNES accents on the part of the
respondents who felt reluctant to project their Chinese identity by means of Chinese-accented
English which for them is as an unwelcoming marker of being failed language learners against
the framework of SLA.
Contrastingly, there also seems in this survey an emergence of linguistic rights and
learner identity experienced by some respondents albeit the number is comparatively small,
which demonstrates itself in highlighting communicative pragmaticity, endorsing L1 Chinese
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identity, and questioning benchmark roles accorded to NES accent standards. Another
significant finding is the respondents’ overseas experiences, i.e. respondents with overseas
experiences are more likely to evaluate their own English accents favourably in comparison
with respondents without overseas experiences, which indicates potential perception changes
on the part of the respondents in line with the accumulation of contacts with different English
varieties.
Possible factors that accounted for the respondents’ attitudinal differences were also
addressed. One major factor among others is the way that English is being perceived, i.e. it has
still been treated by most respondents as a foreign language despite the fact that internationally
and domestically an increasing number of communications are being conducted between
NNESs without the presence of NESs. Their propensity of setting NES accent norms as their
default benchmark and of labelling themselves as “perennial English learners” thus come as no
surprise. But it remains open if their perceptions toward different English accents will change
in the course of time responding to the increasing exposure to different English varieties, so do
their identities, which is unable to be fully captured by this one-off questionnaire survey.
The pedagogical implications obtained from this survey study are significant in that it
poses a series of questions, such as how to address the controversies between the linguistic
reality and the prescriptive standards, between the respondents’ hidden appeals for an
enhancement of their pragmatic competence (Li, Raja, & Sazalie, 2015) and for projecting their
identity via L1-accented English and highly-acclaimed NES accent models. That whether these
conflicts would be resolved against the framework of SLA or ELF, which becomes an issue of
special prominence in China due to its monolingual and standard-advocated reality (Jenkins,
2000), remains to be tested by further research.
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Yan Huang is a senior lecturer at the Department of Foreign Languages in Sichuan University
of Science and Engineering; a full-time PhD candidate at Asia-Europe Institute, University of
Malaya.
Azirah Hashim is a Professor and Executive Director of Asia-Europe Institute, University of
Malaya; the vice President of the International Association of Applied Linguistics.
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