Teachers’ and students’ attitudes and perceptions toward varieties of English in Swedish upper secondary school
2019 (English)In: Klassrumsforskning och språk(ande): Rapport från ASLA-symposiet i Karlstad, 12-13 april, 2018 / [ed] Birgitta Ljung Egeland, Tim Roberts, Erica Sandlund, Pia Sundqvist, Karlstad: Karlstads universitet , 2019, 27, p. 207-233Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
This study investigates teachers’ and students’ attitudes and perceptions toward the teaching and learning of varieties of English in a Swedish upper secondary school context. Data from 129 student questionnaires and nine semi-structured teacher interviews are analyzed. The results show that British English (BrE) appears to retain a prominent role amongst upper secondary students in Sweden as their ideologized values reveal that they feel that BrE sounds more pleasant and intelligent than AmE. However, American English (AmE) is the preferred variety of English amongst the participating students. The results also show that teachers predominantly teach British Standard English (BrSE) and American Standard English (AmSE), which they consider to be the ‘correct’ varieties of English. Teachers agree it is important to teach a wide range of Englishes, but do so by contrasting them with BrSE and AmSE. This study further suggests that other varieties of English are treated as a “funny thing” by the participating teachers, and argues that teachers must be made aware of their own language attitudes.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Karlstad: Karlstads universitet , 2019, 27. p. 207-233
Series
ASLA:s skriftserie ; 27
Keywords [en]
Language varieties, Language attitudes, Varieties of English, English Language Teaching, English as a Foreign Language Instruction, English in Sweden
Keywords [sv]
Språkvarianter, språkattityer, varianter av engelska, engelskundervisning, att undervisa i engelska som främmande språk, engelska i Sverige
National Category
General Language Studies and Linguistics
Research subject
English
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-82563ISBN: 9789187884276 (print)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:oru-82563DiVA, id: diva2:1435516
Conference
ASLA-symposiet 2018, Karlstad University, Karlstad, Sweden, 12-13 April 2018
2020-06-052020-06-052023-01-26Bibliographically approved