Series | SAIL
Edited book | Accents and Pronunciation
Chapter | ELF ‘Awareness’: Student Attitudes Towards Accents in a Context of English as an International Language
ELF ‘Awareness’: Student Attitudes Towards Accents in a Context of English as an International Language
The term ‘ELF awareness’ has gained currency in recent years to refer to teaching and learning contexts in which the ability to communicate in an international environment, between non native speakers, is recognised as a desired outcome of the course. In this chapter we present the results of a survey administered to incoming undergraduate students of languages at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice to determine their attitudes towards non-native accents when English is used in an international context. I go on to compare the results of the same survey administered to students in two MA courses, in English language and literature, and in International Relations, to determine whether MA students are more ‘ELF aware’ than undergraduates, and whether students of International Relations have a more pragmatic, instrumentally motivated approach to ELF than their peers who are specialising in English language and literature. The findings lead to a reflection on the usefulness of an ‘ELF aware approach’ in English language courses in higher education in Italy and Europe.
Submitted: March 23, 2022 | Accepted: May 3, 2022 | Published: Aug. 3, 2022 | Language: en
Keywords Undergraduate Pronunciation Accent MA English Lingua Franca
Copyright © 2022 David Newbold. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-628-2/004
