Non-Native English Speakers’ Attitudes Towards Polish-Accented English

Abstract

Worldwide, most research on attitudes towards foreign-accented English has focused on the judgements of native speakers or differences between the groups of native speakers and non-native speakers – and not on the evaluations of international speakers. The present paper goes against this trend and points to the infancy of attitudinal research in a more international context. The paper identifies the necessity for research in two major areas: 1) attitudes of non-native English speakers towards non-native English accents, 2) differences in normative versus intuitive approaches to teaching English pronunciation. Such empirically-oriented research is crucial to enhance the understanding of non-native speakers attitudes to foreign accent and pronunciation teaching relations. To support these claims, the paper first provides an overview of the literature on attitudinal research, an emphasis is put on attitudes of Polish language users. It further discusses the attitudes towards accented speech in the globalised world, in which English has a status of lingua franca; thus, being an accented speaker among other accented speakers is prevalent in various contexts. The tailored-English teaching models are considered here a possible factor influencing the mutual attitudes of non-native speakers. The article advocates taking steps towards a closer fit between pronunciation teaching policies and standards as well as evaluation criteria actually applicable in the context of real multinational use of English.