Swedish Youths as Listeners of Global Englishes Speakers With Diverse Accents: Listener Intelligibility, Listener Comprehensibility, Accentedness Perception, and Accentedness Acceptance

Abstract

As reflected in the concept of Global Englishes, English mediates global communication, where English speakers represent not merely those from English-speaking countries like United Kingdom or United States but also global people from a wide range of linguistic backgrounds, who speak the language with diverse accents. Thus, to communicate internationally, cultivating a maximized listening proficiency for and positive attitudes toward global Englishes speakers with diverse accents is ever more important. However, with their preference for American English and its popular culture, it is uncertain whether Swedish youth learners are developing these key linguistic qualities to be prepared for the globalized use of English. To address this, we randomly assigned 160 upper secondary students (mean age = 17.25) into six groups, where each group listened to one of six English speakers. The six speakers first languages were Mandarin, Russian/Ukrainian, Tamil, Lusoga/Luganda, American English, and British English. Through comparing the six student groups, we examined their listener intelligibility (actual understanding), listener comprehensibility (feeling of ease or difficulty), accentedness perception (perceiving an accent as native or foreign), and accentedness acceptance (showing a positive or negative attitude toward an accent) of diverse English accents. The results showed that the intelligibility scores and perception/attitude ratings of participants favored the two speakers with privileged accents–the American and British speakers. However, across all six groups, no correlation was detected between their actual understanding of the speakers and their perception/attitude ratings, which often had a strong correlation with their feelings of ease/difficulty regarding the speakers accents. Taken together, our results suggest that the current English education needs innovation to be more aligned with the national syllabus that promotes a global perspective. That is, students need to be guided to improve their actual understanding and sense of familiarity with Global English speakers besides the native accents that they prefer. Moreover, innovative pedagogical work should be undertaken to change Swedish youths’ perceptions and attitudes and prepare them to become open-minded toward diverse English speakers.

Embracing linguistic diversity: Global Englishes language teaching for anti-racist education

“…White instructors are often expected to perform their Whiteness in such contexts. However, in alignment with Global Englishes principles, contemporary English learners must engage with a global community of diverse language users, cultures, and races (Jeong et al, 2021). Therefore, instructional methods should equip learners with the skills and awareness necessary for effective communication in diverse contexts (Rose and Galloway, 2019).…”

English phonology in a globalized world: Challenging native speakerism through listener training in universities in Sweden and the US

“…As noted by Lindemann in her US context (discussed below), helping students become good listeners of diverse English accents requires not only training listening skills and strategies but also critically addressing attitudes towards different accents (Lindemann, 2002;. Through their education (Forsberg, Jansen & Mohr, 2019) and exposure to the popular culture of English-speaking countries, especially American pop culture, young Swedes tend to have positive attitudes towards privileged native accents and somewhat negative ones towards other English accents (Eriksson, 2019;Jeong et al, 2021), which Jeong thought should be addressed in her phonetics courses. When time allows, she organizes asynchronous written discussions on online learning platforms for critically reflecting on attitudes towards different English accents.…”

“…One approach to resisting standard language ideology and native speakerism, although not exactly within the fields of phonetics and phonology, investigates the possibility of training native English listeners to better understand diverse international speakers (e.g., Kubota, 2001;Lindemann, Campbell, Litzenberg, & Subtirelu, 2016). The idea of training native speakers to be better listeners of diverse accents is not only powerful for dismantling standard language ideology and native speakerism, but has also led to the revelation that, for using English for global communication, non-native speakers-as well as native speakers-need to train their listening skills for diverse English pronunciations (Jeong, Elgemark, & Thorén, 2021).…”

“…Although the teaching contexts in the two countries are very different, we equally witness the huge impact of globalization on our students' lives and their growing need to be competent listeners of speakers with diverse accents, including non-Anglophone accents, both within their own country and abroad. Central to Jeong's practice in Sweden is the concept of listener intelligibility, the ability to understand a speaker's pronunciation (Jeong et al, 2021).…”

Speech intelligibility of English spoken by Indonesian and Taiwanese speakers and judged by Taiwanese listeners: application of TOCS+ automatic software

“…Another research about the effect of non-native and native language backgrounds on intelligibility perceived by many different native language backgrounds was conducted by Jeong et al (2021). The result showed that English and American native speakers were the most intelligible to Swedish listeners.…”