An investigation into non english major students’ attitudes towards english native speakers’ and non native speakers’ accents an example at spark english center

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOIUNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES DEPARTMENT OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES ---***---NGUYỄN THỊ QUỲNH TRANG AN INVESTIGATION INTO NON-ENGLISH

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

DEPARTMENT OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES

-*** -NGUYỄN THỊ QUỲNH TRANG

AN INVESTIGATION INTO NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS’ATTITUDES TOWARDS ENGLISH NATIVE SPEAKERS’ AND NON-

NATIVE SPEAKERS’ ACCENTS:

AN EXAMPLE AT SPARK ENGLISH CENTER

NGHIÊN CỨU THÁI ĐỘ CỦA SINH VIÊN KHÔNG CHUYÊN TIẾNG

ANH VỚI GIỌNG BẢN NGỮ VÀ PHI BẢN NGỮ:

MỘT VÍ DỤ CỤ THỂ TẠI TRUNG TÂM ANH NGỮ SPARK

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching MethodologyCode: 60140111

HANOI – 2015

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

DEPARTMENT OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES

-*** -NGUYỄN THỊ QUỲNH TRANG

AN INVESTIGATION INTO NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS’ATTITUDES TOWARDS ENGLISH NATIVE SPEAKERS’ AND NON-

NATIVE SPEAKERS’ ACCENTS:

AN EXAMPLE AT SPARK ENGLISH CENTER

NGHIÊN CỨU THÁI ĐỘ CỦA SINH VIÊN KHÔNG CHUYÊN TIẾNG

ANH VỚI GIỌNG BẢN NGỮ VÀ PHI BẢN NGỮ:

MỘT VÍ DỤ CỤ THỂ TẠI TRUNG TÂM ANH NGỮ SPARK

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching MethodologyCode: 60140111

Supervisor: Prof Dr Nguyễn Quang

HANOI – 2015

I - Nguyễn Thị Quỳnh Trang - hereby declare that the thesis entitled “An

investigation into non-English major students’ attitudes towards English native speakers’ and non-native speakers’ accents: An example at Spark English Center” is the result of my own research in the fulfillment of the

requirement for the Degree of Master of Arts at Faculty of Post GraduateStudies - University of Languages and International Studies, VNU, Hanoi andthis thesis has not been submitted for any degree at any other university orinstitution

Nguyễn Thị Quỳnh Trang

Hanoi, September 2015

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ABSTRACTThis study investigates the attitudes of non-English major studentstowards English native speakers’ and non-native speakers’ accents Theparticipants are 60 Vietnamese non-English major students who are studyingEnglish at Spark English Center, Hanoi The results reveal that: (1) students aremostly able to identify the native and non-native accents However, they arenot very good at recognize each variety of English; (2) the students generallyrate the native accents higher than non-native ones The British English seems

to be the most favourite among all the accents Remarkably, Philippine English

is also highly valued; and (3) the students have positive attitudes to both nativeand non-native models of English

AmE: American English

BrE: British English

GA: General American

InE: Indian English

JaE: Japanese-accented English

NS: Native speaker

NNS: Non-native speaker

PhE: Philippine English

SEC: Spark English Center

RP: Received Pronunciation

ViE: Vietnamese-accented English

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LIST OF TABLES

Page

Table 1 Distinguishing native and non-native speakers 22

Table 2 Guessing the nationality of the speakers 23

Table 3 Mean ratings (and standard deviations) of six speakers on five traits 24

Table 4 Mean ratings of all five traits 25

Table 5 Statistics of Native speakers and Non-native speakers on five traits 25

Table 6 Independent samples t-test: Comparison between Native speakers and Non-native speakers for five traits 26

Table 7 Mean ratings and standard deviations of six speakers as models of English 27 Table 8 Statistics of Native speakers and Non-native speakers as models of English 27 Table 9 Independent samples t-test: Comparison between Native speakers and Non-native speakers for a model of English 28

Table 10 Mean ratings for Statements on the NS model of English 28

Table 11 Mean ratings for Statements on the NNS model of English 28

LIST OF FIGURES

Page

Figure 1 Kachru’s categorization of countries in which English is used 8

(from Crystal, 1997: 54) 8

Figure 2 Participants’ agreement with statement 1 29

Figure 3 Participants’ agreement with statement 2 30

Figure 4 Participants’ agreement with statement 3 31

Figure 5 Participants’ agreement with statement 4 31

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

DECLARATIONS i

ABSTRACT ii

ABBREVIATIONS iii

LIST OF TABLES iv

LIST OF FIGURES v

TABLE OF CONTENTS vi

PART A INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims and objectives of the study 3

3 Research questions 3

4 Scope of the study 3

5 Method of the study 3

6 Significance of the study 4

7 Design of the study 4

PART B DEVELOPMENT 6

CHAPTER 1 LITERATURE REVIEW 6

1.1 What is accent? 6

1.2 Varieties of English accent 7

1.2.1 English native speakers’ accents 8

1.2.2 English non-native speakers’ accents 9

1.3 Attitudes towards accents of English 10

1.3.1 Language attitudes 10

1.3.2 Studies on attitudes towards accents of English 12

CHAPTER 2 METHODOLOGY 16

2.1 Restatement of research questions 16

2.2 Research approach 16

2.3 Context of the study 16

2.3.1 Setting of the study 16

2.3.2 Participants 17

2.4 Research materials 18

2.5 Data collection procedure 20

2.6 Methods of data analysis 20

3.1 Results 22

3.1.1 Part A: The verbal guise test 22

3.1.2 Part B: Statements with a five-point Likert scale 28

3.2 Discussion 32

3.2.1 Research question 1: How is the ability of the SEC non-English major students to identify the speakers’ accents? 32

3.2.2 Research question 2: How do the SEC non-English major students rate the varieties of native and non-native accents? 33

3.2.3 Research question 3: How do the SEC non- English major students think about NS and NNS models? 35

PART C CONCLUSION 36

1 Overall findings 36

2 Limitations of the study 37

3 Suggestions for further studies 37

REFERENCES 38 APPENDIX A – QUESTIONNAIRE I

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PART A INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Nowadays, numerous studies and journals have found the paramountimportance of students’ attitudes in foreign language learning and theirlearning achievement Students’ attitudes is considered as one of the keyfactors in motivating the learners to learn the language Positive attitude couldfacilitate language learning while negative attitude may hinder it.Consequently, it is worth doing research on students’ attitudes and factorsaffecting such attitudes in order to enhance their learning success andachievement when teaching a foreign language

Moreover, it is undoubtful to find the importance of pronunciation inlearning English When people communicate, they can use simple words,simple grammar structures, but there is no such a thing as “simplepronunciation” Good pronunciation is one of the first things that someonelearns in English However, that is also one of the most difficult problemsfacing non-native speakers of English In relation to teaching and learningEnglish pronunciation, questions about models for pronunciation have beenraised Many non-native speakers worry about their accents when they speakEnglish According to Anastasia Koltai (2013), many people feel that having apronounced mother tongue accent may mark them out as being a non-nativespeaker, or “they worry that their natural accented English speech isunintelligible to others” Thus, they try to learn the accents that help themsound more native In Vietnam, people seem to take it for granted that theyonly learn American or British English In students’ minds, American orBritish English have been considered to be authentic and these accents help tosound native as well as best aid them in English learning There is a story in theresearcher’s pronunciation class When she asked her students which

English accent they wanted to learn, all of them chose between American andBritish accent However, having been asked what they knew about American

or British accent, why they liked and wanted to learn those accents, many ofthem could not give the teacher their answers They chose those accents justbecause they heard about them, they found most of English learners wanted tosound like British or American people, and the students thought those twoaccents were the ideal ones in learning English However, there are still manykinds of English native speakers’ accents Moreover, non-native speakers’ andlocal accents have also been promoted in recent literature (Kyle McGee, 2009).Thus, the researcher wonders if the students still like the ones that they chosewhen they have a chance to know other accents

Furthermore, there has not been any research on non-English majorstudents’ attitudes towards English native speakers’ and non-native speakers’accents Unlike English major students, non-English major ones do not havemuch knowledge about English varieties of accents The researcher would like

to do a research on their attitudes to find out more about their understanding,reactions and feelings Thus, the reseacher chooses her working place – SparkEnglish Center to be an example for the reseach in Vietnam

To conclude, the study proceeds from three main reasons, the first lies inthe decisive role of students’ attitudes in their learning success andachievement Next, among the issues in teaching and learning Englishpronunciation are the models for pronunciation The researcher wants to let herstudents have a chance to know more about English native speakers’ and non-native speakers’ accents, then sheds light on their attitudes to those differentvarieties of English Lastly, the researcher has found that there has not beenany research on students’ attitudes towards English native speakers’ and non-native speakers’ accents at any training institutions

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2 Aims and objectives of the studyThe main purpose of the study is to investigate the attitudes of non-English major students towards English native speakers’ and non-nativespeakers’ accents.

With the above aim, the objectives of this study are to:

- Test students’ accent perception ability

- Assess students’ reactions to varieties of English native and non-native accents

- Examine how students think about NS and NNS models

3 Research questionsWith given aim and objectives, the study implies three research questions:

1 How is the ability of the SEC non-English major students to identify the speakers’ accents?

2 How do the SEC non-English major students rate the varieties of native and non-native accents?

3 How do the SEC non-English major students think about NS and NNS models?

4 Scope of the studyThe study is conducted at SEC, Hanoi Because of limited time, it onlyfocuses on the attitudes of non-English major students towards English nativespeakers’ and non-native speakers’ accents The participants are students fromclasses at SEC

5 Method of the studyThe study is carried out by some steps as follows:

First, the survey questionnaire for students is employed to find outstudents’ accent perception ability, reactions to varieties of native and non-native accents

Then, the data are collected, sorted and analyzed quantitatively andqualitatively to obtain realistic results.

To end with, the discussion and implication will be given based on theresults found from the data

6 Significance of the study

The study has been conducted with the expectation that the findings willhelp teachers and educators have a closer look at the need and taste of studentswhen learning English When finding the students’ degree of awareness ofvarieties of English, the kind of accent they want to learn or find easy tounderstand, English teachers can give their students the suitable or favouritematerials, which makes them have more interest when learning Exploring thestudents’ perceptions and opinions of different accents also helps teachersguide their students towards the specific goals The students through thelearning process may choose the target accents which they like the best Thenthe proper materials could be used further to help students obtain these specificaccents Moreover, the centers or schools can find some improvement for theirteaching course books to offer different English varieties

7 Design of the study

The study consists of three main parts:

Part A, Introduction, presents the rationale of the study, the aim andobjectives, the research questions, the significance, the scope, the method andthe design of the study

Part B is Development that includes three chapters:

Chapter 1, Literature Review, gives an overview of previous studies onaccents, discussing varieties of English and reporting work on attitudestowards accents of English

Chapter 2 is Methodology, which restates the research questions,

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presents the research approach, describes the setting of the study and theparticipants Moreover, this chapter shows how the researcher applies the datacollection instrument and her procedure of conducting the study Theresearcher also presents the methods to study and analyze the informationcollected.

Chapter 3 is Results and Discussion, in which the researcher reports themain findings and discusses them in relation to previous studies

Part C is Conclusion, which summarizes all findings explored and bringsout useful suggestions for the teachers to find the suitable accents to interestthe non-English major students when learning English The limitations of thestudy and suggestions for further studies are also included in this part

PART B DEVELOPMENTCHAPTER 1 LITERATURE REVIEWThis chapter aims to provide a theoretical basis for the study by a review

of the relevant language attitude studies At first, there is a brief introduction ofthe concepts related to accent, varieties of English accents and languageattitude studies After that, the previous studies on attitudes towards native andnon-native accents are examined both in and out Vietnam

1.1 What is accent?

As defined in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, an accent is a

“way of speaking typical of a particular group of people and especially of thenatives or residents of a region” According to that, an accent is the indication

of a person’s way of speaking and is a manifest feature of speech This featurehelps to determine the similarities and differences in speech between speakers

Becker (1995: 37), in terms of sociolinguistics, defines “An accent is thepart of a person’s language that serves to identify the speaker’s regional origin

or national/ ethnic identity no matter what language the person is speaking” Itcan be inferred that an accent can define people and is a means of pointingtheir speech community

According to Carter & Nunan (2001), as cited in Lam (2007), an accent

is a social and/ or regional variety of a language which differs from others inpronunciation

From the above definitions, it can be drawn that accent is the way that aperson or large group of people which generally grouped by a nationality orspecific area speak

Although an accent can be used as a fairly reliable predictor of aspeaker’s origin, it can also carry pejorative stereotypes Abercrombie (1956:42) argues in this issue: “Accent (…) is a word which, in its popular use, 6

carries a stigma: speaking without an accent is considered preferable tospeaking with an accent (…) The popular, pejorative, use of the word begs animportant question by its assumption that an accent is something which isadded to, or in some other way distorts, an accepted norm.” According to this,English is more likely to be subjected to accented speech than any otherlanguage not only because of the significant number of its speakers in theworld, but also by virtue of the varieties of its accents (American, British,Indian, French, etc.) This fact will be discussed more in the following part.

1.2 Varieties of English accent

From the 17th to the 21st centuries, the number of English speakers hasgrown from 5-7 million to 1.5 to 2 billion (Jenkins, 2003) Since then, severalmodels for the spread of English have been created to show the position ofEnglish in the world It is widely accepted that English is now the primarylingua franca, that is, “the language used to communicate among speakers ofdifferent native languages throughout the world” (Dauer, 2005) There aremany varieties of English, and it has different kinds of foreign accent

The global spread of a simplified form of English was foreseen byFollick in 1914 (Daniel, 2000) Today, his vision has been enormouslysurpassed: English is used as the global language - spoken in all fields whichrequire international contact and co-operation (Crystal, 1997: 8) The globalspread of English has resulted in different varieties of English For groupingthe varieties of English in the world, the well-known Kachru’s three-circlemodel of world Englishes (1985) should be applied:

Expanding Circle Outer Circle

Inner Circle e.g USA, UK, Australia

(b) The Outer Circle: where English is used as a second language.English is spoken by people whose countries were once colonized mainly by Britain orAmerica such as India, Philippines or Singapore

(c) The Expanding Circle: where English is used as a foreign language Inthese countries, English is not used as the main language for communication such asChina, Japan or Germany

1.2.1 English native speakers’ accentsAccording to Kachru’s categorization, English native speakers are from countries in the Inner Circle where English is used as a native language Their

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native accents are often regarded as standard accents The two prominentstandard accents are Received Pronunciation and General American ReceivedPronunciation (RP) is an accent at the top of an accent prestige hierarchy inBritain (Edwards, 1982) Wakelin (1977: 5) points its high position as alearning model, commenting that this accent is “usually associated with ahigher social and educational background”, at least in the UK It is also argued

by Steward, Ryan and Giles (1985) that RP is the prestige accent not only inthe UK, but also throughout the Anglophone world Along with RP, GeneralAmerican (GA) is one of the two best-described accents of English It is theprestige accent in America Though these two accents are regional ones, theyare used over a wide geographical area They are not just the accents which areassociated with a small area, but are used by people in many countries Theseaccents are also the ones transcribed in dictionaries, and well-known all overthe world Thus, they are seen as being suitable to teach to foreign learners ofEnglish They become the ideal models for many people from countries whenlearning English

1.2.2 English non-native speakers’ accents

Traditionally, native English speakers in the Kachru’s “Inner Circle” areconsidered to be the first, standard-providing users of the language However,this perception may not explain properly for the massive numbers of non-native English users worldwide the impact these speakers may have towardspreading linguistic change within the language

Non-native speakers can be separated into two groups basing onKachru’s categorization The first group is “Outer Circle” English in thecountries of this circle is an institutionalized or historical language of thegovernment or other national entity or class, for example India and otherformer British colonies (Kachru, 1982) The second group is “ExpandingCircle”, the outermost of the Three Concentric Circles This circle includes

speakers from countries such as China, Russia, Japan, and many of Europe.Moreover, as suggested by the circle’s name, it includes a rapidly increasingnumber of other countries where English is widespread in the media, and is arequired foreign language that students have to learn when reaching secondaryschool.

Non-native speaking populations make an incredible change about theusage of English as a world language Thus, non-native speakers’ accents arealso examined more and more by many researchers According to theDictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics of Crystal (1997: 3), a non-nativeaccent is characterized as: “The cumulative auditory effect of those features ofpronunciation which identify where a person is from, regionally or socially” Inthis sense, a non-native accent is a perceivable unit which is noticeablydifferentiated from the native speaker’s way of speaking

This study will focus on both native and non-native accents of Englishand find out the attitudes of students towards these two kinds of accent

1.3 Attitudes towards accents of English

1.3.1 Language attitudes

Attitudes could be viewed as a tendency to respond positively ornegatively towards a certain thing, idea, person, situation, etc Gardner (1995)defines attitudes as “an evaluative reaction to some referent, inferred on thebasis of the individual’s beliefs or opinions about the referent” The LongmanDictionary of Contemporary English (2001) defined attitudes as “opinions andfeelings that you usually have about something” In social psychology, theconcept “attitudes” has a great meaning According to Lambert (1967),

“attitude has cognitive, affective and conative components and consists of anunderlying psychological predisposition to act or to influence behaviors in acertain way Attitude is linked to a person's values and beliefs and promotes ordiscourages the choices made in all realms of activity, whether academic or

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informal” Thus, attitudes could highly influence how individuals approachmany situations in life, including foreign language learning.

Crystal (1992) defines language attitudes as the feelings people haveabout their own language or the language of others It is essential to studylanguage attitudes because of its substantial power On one hand, languageattitudes have an influence on the development of languages As Crismore(1996) says, positive language attitudes contribute to the acceptance andgrowth of language variations in a speech community and it improves literacylevels On the other hand, behaviors can be influenced by attitudes (Lambert,1967)

As argued by Episcopo (2009: 9), research on language attitudespresents several quantifiable difficulties, and designing a study that revealsprecise data can be problematic First, it is nearly impossible to construct astudy that is naturally interactive and conversational between subjects whenthere is only researcher observation or mono-directional communication.Second, language attitudes are based upon numerous factors such asappearance, ethnic affiliation, cultural and social context, sociological andethnographic background, pragmatic cues, and many others Accordingly, it ishard to evaluate one of these variables without considering all of the others.Third, because of the social stereotypes and prejudices, attitudes are alsouncomfortable for subjects to discuss In spite of its various methodologicaldifficulties, the qualitative data retrieved from language attitude studies revealinteresting generalizations about a speech community’s standards andexpectations

In this study, attitude is defined as awareness, reactions and opinionsthat non-English major students at SEC have towards varieties of Englishaccents The researcher tries to minimize the limitation of a research aboutlanguage attitudes and adapts the verbal guise technique and questionnaire to

measure participants’ attitudes most effectively.

1.3.2 Studies on attitudes towards accents of English

From the first studies of Lambert and his colleagues (1967, 1960), therehave been more and more studies about language attitudes, especially on themeasurement of language attitudes toward varieties of English This study willmainly concentrate on reviewing the pieces of research on non-native speakers’attitudes towards varieties of English, as the subjects on the research areVietnamese, who are non-native ones

Alford and Strother (1990) conducted a study to capture native and native students’ attitudes towards regional U.S accents They showed thatnon-native speakers were able to detect differences between the accents, whichwas contradictory to research by Scales et al (2006) and Mousssu (2010), whodemonstrated that English learners had difficulty in distinguishing betweennative and non-native accents

non-A study by Dalton-Puffer, Kaltenboeck, and Smit (1997) analyzedAustrian’s attitudes to varieties of English This research examined whether thevarieties of English spoken influenced subjects’ judgements of accentedspeech, as well as analyzed how participants judged different English accents.The findings clearly revealed that non-native speakers were rated lower thannative speakers More specifically, preference was indicated for standardaccents (particularly RP) with the Austrian accents judged to be of low status.Participants also showed strong ability in identifying the country of thespeakers Researchers linked the preference for the RP accent with its commonuse as the model for Austrian students when learning English

The study of Ladegaard (1998) which investigated the attitudes of 96secondary and university students in Denmark showed similar results Fiveaccents were examined including RP, GA, Cockney, General Australian, andScottish Standard English The RP accent was selected as the most prestigious

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and favoured choice as a model Students found RP and GA accents the easiest

to identify

In a quantitative study by Mugler (2002), non-native speakers’ attitudestowards four different accents of English were investigated The participantswere ESL learners from Fiji and other Pacific nations The findings of thisstudy revealed that respondents only rated highly the British English accent onstatus On the other hand, American English was shown to be one of the mosteasily recognizable accents According to the authors, British English wasperceived high in status mainly due to the fact that it was regarded as a prestigeaccent There was also a suggestion that attitudes, cultural influence andexposure to the media could be factual reasons that made American andAustralian accents receive positive attitudes by Pacific listeners

The above reviewed studies are about the attitudes of participants fromthe Western business world In this study, the researcher also wants to reviewsome studies of Asian people’s attitudes

Fraser (2006) undertook a study with two groups of high school students

in Japan The chosen accents in the study were from Inner Circle (England,America, and Scotland), Outer Circle (Zimbabwe), and Expanding Circle(Taiwan, Japan) countries Students were judged on their ability to identify thecountry of origin for each accent They also did a test on comprehension andwere asked to complete a questionnaire regarding their opinions of accents.While students displayed limited ability to identify Inner Circle speakers, theywere generally able to identify the origin of the Japanese speaker Thatindicated Japanese students’ awareness of their accent In terms of preferenceand prestige, the American was judged highest It was considered the mostdesirable goal and model for the classroom While the local Japanese accentwas judged to be most familiar and most likeable, it was rarely chosen as agoal or model

The study by Kim (2007) investigated 43 Korean adults’ attitudestowards native and non-native varieties of English in relation to the perspective

of English as an international language In order to examine participants’language attitudes, this study employed both a verbal guise test as an indirectapproach and a qualitative questionnaire as a direct approach The mainfindings pointed out that Korean adults preferred American English as a modelfor guidance and did not discriminate between native and non-native varieties

of English They also regarded English as an international language tocommunicate not only with native speakers but also with non-native speakers

of English, and showed positive attitudes to non-native varieties of English.However, they were not well aware of varieties of English

Yang (2011) investigated a study on the attitudes of 30 Chinesepostgraduate students toward native and non-native varieties of English Inorder to examine the attitudes, this study employed the verbal guise technique,

in which seven varieties of English were selected for evaluation in thedimensions of status and solidarity: New York English, London English,Edinburgh English, Singapore English, Japanese English, Indian English, andChinese English The overall findings suggested that native varieties of Englishwere favored by Chinese respondents, especially the New York English andLondon English In terms of the solidarity dimension, the respondents heldpositive attitudes towards Chinese English Moreover, the majority of therespondents in this study were able to identify whether the speech sampleswere native or non-native, however, the recognition rate of each variety ofEnglish was relatively lower

In Vietnam, there are very few studies on learners’ attitudes towardsvarieties of English One of those is Ton and Pham’s (2010) study onVietnamese teachers’ and students’ perceptions of global English They found

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out that the students and teachers believed students used English more withnon-native speakers than with native speakers outside the classroom, butBritish and American English tended to be the preferred models, at least in theclassroom.

From all of the previous studies, it can be concluded that the nativeaccents were often preferred more than non-native ones However, in somedimensions such as solidarity, familiarity, likeableness, etc., the participantsshowed their positive attitudes towards non-native accents Furthermore,participants still had difficulty in distinguishing between different accents

CHAPTER 2 METHODOLOGY2.1 Restatement of research questions

In this study, the researcher tries to acquire a deeper understanding ofstudent attitudes towards English native speakers’ and non-native speakers’accents by testing how they can be aware of an accent and by assessing their

reactions to varieties of English accents The first research question is “How is

the ability of the SEC non-English major students to identify the speakers’ accents?” The answer for this question gives comprehension of students’

ability to distinguish between English accents (including native and non-nativeaccents), and also helps to shape the explanation for the results of the secondresearch question, which focuses on students’ evaluation of each type ofEnglish accent as related to their experience to a given accent The second

research question is “How do the SEC non-English major students rate the

varieties of native and non-native accents?” After that, the third research

question – “How do the SEC non- English major students think about NS and

NNS models?” - is given to have a deep-rooted insight into the attitudes of

students towards native and non-native models of English

2.2 Research approach

A survey research is a study of a large group through direct study of asubset of that group Surveys are widely used to gather data at a particularpoint in time to describe the nature of existing conditions Survey is a quick,inexpensive and efficient way of getting information from a large group ofpeople A survey is also proved to be a powerful tool in collecting informationabout the opinions, attitudes, perceptions of respondents For these reasons, theresearcher believes that a survey research design will fit her purpose

2.3 Context of the study

2.3.1 Setting of the study

Spark English Center is a center in Hanoi and has operated for 2 years

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The center is opened with the desire to help non-English major studentsimprove their English level The center has English courses which are suitablefor students from the beginning level to the intermediate one Pronunciationclass is the basic class for students who want to learn English from thebeginning or to make good preparations for later courses Then, the studentscan join Grammar or Communication class depending on which Englishrespect they hope to enhance The center also has TOEIC class, in whichstudents have chance to learn the TOEIC tips as well as practice with numerousexercises and do the free TOEIC tests Each class has from 12 to 15 students –the standard number for an ideal English class.

2.3.2 Participants

The study is conducted with the participation of 60 non-English majorstudents randomly chosen from all classes at Spark English Center To selectthe participants, all students of the center are numbered, then the randomnumbers will be generated by the computer The majority of chosen studentsare aged from 18 to 23 They come from different backgrounds andenvironments, varied from the cities to mountainous areas in Vietnam Somestudents are living in central Hanoi They are students from many universities

in Hanoi, mainly science students All of them have been learning English for

at least 7 years but enrolled the course with low and medium level of Englishproficiency This information is from the result of the English entrance test thestudents did when registering for the courses of the center The students sharethat they did not pay much attention to English subject when they were at highschool because they were partial towards scientific subjects for their entranceexamination Thus, they find many English words new to them and do notknow how to read them That is why they cannot do the English exercises anduse English to communicate

2.4 Research materials

To answer the research questions, the researcher adapts a verbal guise

test and the questions from the research “Korean adults’ attitudes towards

varieties of English” of Kim (2007) According to Garrett, Coupland and

Williams (2003: 16), the verbal guise test is the “indirect approach” to measurehow participants become aware of different accents of native and non-nativevarieties of English In addition, asking questions is the “direct approach” toask participants how they assess native and non-native varieties of English.These two measures of language attitudes are evaluated independently, thencompared with each other in order to understand students’ attitudes towardsEnglish native and non-native speakers’ accents

Part A of the questionnaire of this study is the verbal guise test Usingthe verbal guise test is the common technique to measure language attitudes,which has been applied more and more by researchers in language attitudestudies It involves a series of different speakers who are recorded for the

“judges” (Yang, 2011) to make the evaluation It makes the study authentic and

it is hoped to be able to investigate people’s attitudes effectively

There are six recordings representing six varieties of English beingselected based on Kachru’s (1985) circles of English use: American English(AmE) and British English (BrE) in the inner circle, Philippine English (PhE)and Indian English (InE) in the outer circle, and Japanese-accented English(JaE) and Vietnamese-accented English (ViE) in the expanding circle

The audio samples for the test are taken from the website(http://accent.gmu.edu/) which has most of all accents of English for manypurposes, including research ones (Weinberger, 2007) The website alsopresents biographical information of the speaker in each sample (Appendix B)

The accents are thought to provide a reasonable approximation of

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speakers from these countries It cannot be denied that these recordings are justone example of an accent and not a model of the selected countries However,the AmE and BrE speakers are regarded as representative ones of standardAmerican and British English The other four speakers (PhE, InE, JaE, andViE) are recognized as fluent ones of English with non-native accents They allare considered suitable accents to measure participants’ attitudes towardsvarieties of English models indirectly.

There are three female and three male speakers Their ages are from 21

to 69 The reading text is the same to all speakers The recordings are relativelyshort (average of 22 seconds) in length to avoid the participants’ tirednesswhich may arise due to duplicate readings The text from the audio samples is

as follows:

“Please call Stella Ask her to bring these things with her from the store: Six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of blue cheese, and maybe a snack for her brother Bob We also need a small plastic snake and a big toy frog for the kids She can scoop these things into three red bags, and we will go meet her Wednesday at the train station.”

(Weinberger, 2007)

The first and second questions in part A are multiple choice ones to testthe participants’ awareness of different English accents The third and fourthquestions are the differential scale for the verbal guise test Participants have tochoose numbers in the scale to rate the six accents

Part B of the questionnaire of this study contains four questions foranalyses of students’ attitudes to the native and non-native speaker models.Each question is presented as a statement with a five-point Likert scale ofagreement

2.5 Data collection procedure

The questionnaire was translated into Vietnamese to ensure noparticipants misunderstood the questions

In part A of the questionnaire, participants were given instructions onhow to complete the evaluation sheet in the verbal guise test They were toldthat there were no right or wrong answer and their attitudes were the mostimportant when evaluating six accents They listened to six accents through theresearcher’s laptop computer with outdoor speakers The six recordings wererandomly arranged by the order of AmE, PhE, JaE, InE, BrE, and ViE Eachrecording was played twice so that participants could make sure about theirchoices for the three questions More time was also given between play back tofill in the questionnaires

After having done the verbal guise test, participants were giveninstructions on how to do part B of the questionnaire They were invited to askquestions for clarification Then participants responded to five-point Likertscale questions It took about 15 minutes to finish all the survey

2.6 Methods of data analysis

The evaluations for the five personality traits in the verbal guise test arearranged by the same criteria: 1 is the most favorable evaluation while 5 is themost unfavorable evaluation In the evaluation for good and bad model ofEnglish, 1 is for the best and 5 is for the worst Also, in the Likert scale of part

B, 1 is for strong agreement and 5 is for strong disagreement The total number

of participants in the whole survey is 60 and all of them complete thequestionnaire with no blank answer

The data were analyzed with SPSS (version 16.0) SPSS helped tocalculate mean ratings, standard deviations, percentages, etc To answer thefirst research question, the researcher calculated descriptive statistics todetermine whether participants correctly identify the speakers’ accents and

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whether the speaker is a native or non-native one To answer the second

research question, the researcher used an independent samples t-test to

compare two means which are participants’ evaluations of English native andnon-native accents The last research question was answered by counting thefrequency of the statistics, then calculating the percentages to see howparticipants think about the native and non-native models of English

CHAPTER 3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONThis section presents the main findings of the study, explains thepossible reasons for those findings and discusses them in relation to previouswork to see if their findings match If not, it asks why and tries to give ananswer.

3.1 Results

The results have been organised according to parts of questionnaire

3.1.1 Part A: The verbal guise test

3.1.1.1 Participants’ awareness of varieties of English

The participants are asked to find whether the speakers are native ornon-native ones and to guess the nationality of the speakers In order toexamine whether the participants are aware of varieties of English, theirchoices are analyzed in percentages

The result in Table 1 shows that there are participants who cannot make

a distinction between native and non-native accents The problem of awarenessmainly occurs on finding speakers who are in Inner and Outer circle: 76.7% ofparticipants correctly find the American speaker be native; 33.3% ofparticipants mistake Philippine speaker for native speaker; etc As can be seenfrom Table 1, however, all of participants accurately point out Japanese andVietnamese speakers are non-native ones with 100% given correct answer

Table 1 Distinguishing native and non-native speakers