Back to Izmir Schedule

Presenters
Ms. Branka Drljača Margić
Department of English Language and Literature
Faculty of Arts and Sciences
University of Rijeka
Trg Ivana Klobučarića 1
51000 Rijeka
Croatia

Dr. Dorjana Širola
Department of English Language and Literature
Faculty of Arts and Sciences
University of Rijeka
Trg Ivana Klobučarića 1
51000 Rijeka
Croatia

Title
(Teaching) English as an International Language and Native Speaker Norms: Attitudes of Croatian MA and BA Students of English

The authors compared attitudes to English as an international language and to non-native varieties of English held by students who had just completed the English as a Global Language course in the English MA Programme at the University of Rijeka and by BA students who had never been exposed to those concepts in the course of their education. They also investigated whether and to what extent the two groups believed they would rely on native speaker norms and teach their future EFL students about non-native varieties of English. The sample comprised 45 students, who were asked to fill in a questionnaire. The results were then statistically analysed.

The analysis shows that MA students are more open to the idea of international English as a separate variety of English based on features of various native and non-native English varieties; however, they still think that native features should predominate. Similarly, 20% of MA students believe that outer-circle Englishes are as important linguistic models for world English as inner-circle Englishes, while not a single BA student agrees with this statement. The vast majority of BA students (76%), as opposed to only 15% of MA students, state they will prepare their future pupils to communicate primarily with native English speakers. However, no student from either group would tolerate morphosyntax which does not conform to native speaker norms (e.g. Seidlhofer 2004), while both groups are split evenly when it comes to tolerating their future pupils' non-native pronunciations that do not hinder communication (e.g. Jenkins 2000).