Saudi Students’ Attitude towards World Englishes

Afnan Almegren

Abstract


In order to create and adopt better educational and pedagogic policies, it is important to understand students’ attitude towards the varieties of English. This study aims to investigate young Saudi EFL learners’ attitude towards the concept of World Englishes. It also explores Saudi learners’ preference of one English variety over the others. This study is significant since few studies have been done on the awareness of World Englishes among Saudi EFL learners and the present research is designed to fill this gap. The present study will help apply the concept of World Englishes to the teaching of English language in a sample Saudi educational environment. In addition, it will help develop a positive attitude towards cultural understanding and cultural diversity in Saudi Arabia. This study has three objectives: to examine and understand how EFL learners see World Englishes, and varieties of English as a second language in particular, in the Saudi Arabian context; to find out how Saudi EFL learners view the apparent domination of one variety of English over others; and to investigate the reasons why one variety of English is preferred to others. The study uses both direct and indirect techniques of measuring the attitude through interviews and a questionnaire. The questionnaire contained both open-ended and close-ended questions, one of which was a verbal guise test. The samples were obtained from the two largest public educational institutes in Saudi Arabia with both male and female adult students.The findings indicate that Saudi students are aware of some varieties of the English language, though they seem to have varied attitudes towards the diverse varieties of World Englishes. Students generally viewed American and British English as the standard English varieties and did not accept other varieties of World Englishes as standard. The results also showed that in spite of the fact that most of the students generally considered a ‘native’ teacher’s English as superior, they principally favored a Saudi teacher to teach them.

Keywords


EFL, World Englishes, Attitude, Saudi, Native English Varieties, Non-Native English Varieties

Full Text:

PDF

References


Al Asmari, A. (2014). Redefining Pedagogical Priorities: An Investigation of EFL Teachers' Perceptions towards Teaching English as a Lingua Franca in the Saudi Higher Education Context. Journal of Education and Practice 5(28).

Al-Asmary, A. M., & Khan, S. R., (2014). World Englishes in the EFL Teaching in Saudi Arabia. Arab World Englishes Journal, 5, 316-325.

Al-Dosari, H.S. (2011). An Investigation of Attitudes towards Varieties of Spoken English in a Multi-lingual Environment. Academy Publisher Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 1(9) 1041-1050

Alenazi, O. (2012). EFL teachers’ employability in Saudi Arabia: Native and non-native speakers. GSTF Journal of Law and Social Sciences (JLSS), 2(1), 310-315. Retrieved December 15, 2015 from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1518517651? accountid=142908

Alkaff, A.A. (2013). Students' Attitudes and Perceptions towards Learning English. Arab World English Journal 4(2)

Ary, D., Jacobs, L. C., Razavieh, A., Sorensen, C. K. (2009). Introduction to Research in Education, 8th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Bayard, D., Weatherall, A., Gallois, C., & Pittam, J. (2001). Pax Americana? Accent attitudinal evaluations in New Zealand, Australia and America. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 5, 22-49.

Bolton, K. (2005). Where WE stands: approaches, issues, and debate in world Englishes. World Englishes, 24(1), 69–83. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.0883- 2919.2005.00388.x

Buckingham, L. (2014). Recognizing English accents in the community: Omani students' preferences and perceptions of nativeness. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. doi:10.1080/01434632.2014.909443

CLIE. Cohen, L., Manion, L. & Morrison, K. (2007). Research Methods in Education (6th Edition).

Edwards, J. R. (1982). Language attitudes and their implications among English speakers. In E. B. Ryan & H. Giles (eds.), Attitudes towards Language Variation: Social and Applied Contexts. London: Edward Arnold, 20-33.

Elyas, T. (2014). Exploring Saudi Arabia's EFL Student Identity: A Narrative Critical Approach. International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature 3(5).

Garrett, P., Williams, A., & Evans, B. (2005). Attitudinal data from New Zealand, Australia, the USA and UK about each other's Englishes: recent changes or consequences of methodologies. Multilingua 24, 211–35.

Jenkins, J., Cogo, A. & Dewey, M. (2011). Review of developments in research into English as a lingua franca. Language Teaching, 44, 281-315. doi:10.1017/S0261444811000115.

Kachru, B. (1985). Standards, codification, and sociolinguistic realism: The English language in the outer circle. In R. Quirk and H. Widdowson, (eds.) English in the World: Teaching and Learning the language and the literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 11-30.

Kachru, B. (1992). Teaching world Englishes. In B. Kachru (Ed.), The Other Tongue: English Across Cultures. Second edition. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 355-366.

Kim, Y. (2007). Korean Attitude towards Varieties of English (MSc Thesis). https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842 /1903 (December 13, 2014)

Kim. S. (2002). Second language anxiety and coping strategies. In S. Kim (Ed.), Teaching in the U.S.: Handbook for international faculty and TAs, Faculty and TA development. Ohio State University.

Mahboob, A. and Elyas, T. (2014). English in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. World Englishes, 33: 128–142. doi: 10.1111/weng.12073

Mesthrie, R. & Bhatt, R. (2008). World Englishes: An Introduction to New Language Varieties. Cambridge: University Press.

Mydans, S. (2001). Nations in Asia give English their own flavorful quirks. http://www.singaporewindow.org/ sw01/010701ny.htm (August 12, 2012)

Pennycook, A. (2007). Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows. London: Routledge.

Phillipson, R. (1992). Linguistic imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Phillipson, R. (2003). English only-Europe? Challenging Language Policy. London: Routledge. Pintrich, P. (2003). A motivational science perspective on the role of student motivation in learning and teaching contexts. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(4), 667–686.

Rousseau, P. (2012). A World Englishes Study of Korean University Students: Effects of Pedagogy on Language Attitudes. MA TESOL Collection. Paper 543. http://digitalcollections.sit.edu /ipp_collection/543 (February 19, 2015)

Ryan, E. & Giles, H. (eds.) (1982). Attitudes towards language variation. Social and applied contexts. London: Edward Arnold.

Saville-Troike, M. (2006). Introducing Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP.

Tien, N. (2008). Awareness of World Englishes of Vietnamese Users of English. http://tapsan.hcmussh.edu.vn/3cms/ upload/ tapsankh/ File/TAP%20SAN%20SO/ 44/448.pdf (December 10, 2015)

Widdowson, H. (1994). The Ownership of English. TESOL Quarterly, 28 (2), 377-389.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.7n.4p.238

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Bookmark and Share


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

2012-2023 (CC-BY) Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD. 

International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature

To make sure that you can receive messages from us, please add the journal emails into your e-mail 'safe list'. If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox', check your 'bulk mail' or 'junk mail' folders.