DEVELOPING ESL STUDENTSʹʹ ACCENTS: AMERICAN ENGLISH VS. BRITISH ENGLISH

For many years, English as a Second language (ESL) students have been subject to different puzzling audio books and software with American and British English accents on one hand, and a variety of the teachersʹ non-native and native-like accents inside the classrooms on the other. The paper aims at investigating the relationship between General American accent defined by Shitara (1993) as the most "neutral" accent of American English which is free of regional characteristics and Received Pronunciation (RP) stated by Wells (2008) as the standard British English accent and pinpointing the extent of ESL studentsʹ tendency to one of the two mentioned accents in order to help teachers select the most appropriate methods for teaching listening and speaking in ESL classrooms. To fulfill these purposes, sixty freshmen undertaking a full-course of study in Lang. Lab. 2 in Islamic Azad University of Dezful were selected and through a standard proficiency test derived from NTC’s TOEFL Test, it was observed that the students were homogeneous. Then, they were given a common text to recite so that their tendency to one of the two Standard English accents could be realized. Afterward, the specific sounds features of General American and RP were elicited and the students’ recordings were rated based on the articulation of those features. Based on the frequency, One sample T-test and the Mean Ranks posed by Hatch and Farhady (1982), it was observed that the students were more capable of articulating American features rather than the British ones. Hence, the null hypothesis which stated “There is no relationship between American and British English accents.” was rejected, and the first hypothesis was verified. That is, the ESL students are more talented to utilize American English accent than the British English accent. The pedagogical implications of the present study are 1) recognizing the ESL students’ tendency to American English accent inherited from the students’ past experience including their former instructors, course books and other materials; 2) providing the students with an academic atmosphere wherein American English system including the related course books, audio and visual materials and efficient instructors is dominant.