Abstract
This paper focuses on non-native accents in ESP classrooms. In particular it looks at native and non-native speakers of English accents used in the audio material accompanying six ESP textbooks. In a second study, a group of undergraduate ESP students of Law and Tourism were asked to assess some of the non-native speakers accents found in these materials, focussing on aspects such as fluency, pronunciation, intelligibility and foreign accent. More specifically, they were asked to rate the following non-native accents of speakers in English: French, German, Polish, Chinese and Spanish. Results from the first part of the study show that native speaker models continue to be present in ESP textbooks to a far higher degree than non-native ones. In the second part, the non-native accents that students rated most positively were those of German and Polish speakers, and those seen in the most negative terms were French and Spanish. In general, the Law students tended to value native accents more than non-native ones, whereas students of Tourism broadly accept both native and non-native accents.
Highlights
Introduction and statement of purposeThere is no doubt that English has been for some time -and still is- the main language used in many “different domains around the globe” (Bayyurt and Sifakis, 2017: 4) such as in international situations of commerce, business or politics
As Dogancay and Hardman (2017: 19) point out, this “global spread of English has led to the emergence of diverse varieties of English that represent different sociocultural norms, political affiliations and bilingual/multilingual identities”. This expansion has had a profound effect on the world we live in; a whole new context of English has recently emerged, one in which a broad range of variability in the language is possible, sometimes known English as a Lingua Franca (Seidlhofer, 2001; Jenkins, 2007; Walker, 2010; Seidlhofer, 2011; Mauranen, 2012; Motschenbacher, 2013; Mauranen, et al, 2015; Mauranen et al, 2016)
Less than 5% of files extracted from the six ESP textbooks contained only non-native speakers
Summary
There is no doubt that English has been for some time -and still is- the main language used in many “different domains around the globe” (Bayyurt and Sifakis, 2017: 4) such as in international situations of commerce, business or politics. A group of undergraduate Law and Tourism ESP students at the University of the Balearic Islands were asked to rate the speech of several non-native speakers extracted from these materials on aspects like fluency, pronunciation and intelligibility, as well as more subjective criteria such as I wouldn’t mind having an English teacher with this accent or this speaker sounds like a native speaker of English This second study was included because textbooks continue to be the main teaching materials used in language classes (Marks, 2006; Lopez-Jiménez, 2009); students are clearly important participants in the classroom (Baker, 2011), and their points of view on the learning process should always be taken into account, including their perspectives on the teaching materials used therein
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