Masaryk University Faculty of Arts
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- 3.1Setting
- 3.2Participants
- 3.3 Measurement Instruments
- 3.3.1 Speech samples
3.Research methodsThe goal of the research is to find out to what extent the proposed changes of orientation towards a more global representation of the language would meet the English language learners’ objectives in the Czech Republic regarding their accent. The research investigated the attitudes of EFL learners and speakers in the Czech Republic towards ten varieties of English speech, towards non-native accents in general, and their views of standard pronunciation models. The study employs data collection through an online questionnaire and analysis method with the integration of quantitative and qualitative approaches. The accent attitudes were elicited upon listening to preselected speech samples forming one section of the questionnaire. A qualitative method was used to further explore the reasons behind the participants’ choices. The following main research questions and sub-questions were addressed in this study:
3.1SettingThe research has been carried out in the Czech Republic, which is considered a country from the Expanding Circle (Kachru, 1988) where English is spoken as a foreign language. Most of the English language learners and speakers can be considered ELF learners and speakers, because they use English for communication with other non-native speakers. English is the most frequently studied first foreign language in both elementary and secondary schools, and it is the primary contact language between Czech speakers and other speakers from different lingua-cultural background. An orientation towards ELF approach is therefore commonplace. 3.2ParticipantsThe participants of the study were 115 EFL learners and speakers from the Czech Republic whose L1 is Czech. The participants were selected through convenience sampling to represent the target population of EFL learners and speakers in the Czech Republic of various gender, age, and language proficiency. The study may not be sufficiently representative of the entire target group, because the sample is not random. A large portion of the data was collected through questionnaires distributed among students at the researcher’s school site, secondary school Elgartovo gymnázium in Brno, and most of the participants in the other age groups were university graduates. Participation was voluntary and confidential. For an overview of the sample group characteristics, see Appendix III. 3.3 Measurement InstrumentsThe data were collected through a Web-based questionnaire including online media for evaluation distributed via a direct link. The questionnaire consisted of three sections:
The questionnaire comprised 17 questions altogether and was available in two language versions, English and Czech. Close-ended questions were used to gain data for quantitative analysis, and open-ended questions were used for the purpose of qualitative analysis. Multiple choice items were employed for the respondents’ demographic information (age, gender) and English language proficiency and usage. Lickert scales with five response options were used for indicating the extent to which the respondents agree or disagree with the given statement regarding their accent attitudes, identity, and confidence. Numerical rating scales with a scale from 1-10 were used for evaluation of the speech samples in three categories:
Open-ended questions were used for allowing greater freedom of expression of opinion for a question regarding their view of the importance of a native model for pronunciation and for listing the nationalities of the speakers with whom they communicate in English. Another open-ended item was added at the end of the questionnaire for additional comments from the respondents. 3.3.1 Speech samplesTen audio recordings of ten different speakers were selected for the purposes of non-native accents evaluation. The Speech Accent Archive (Weinberger, 2015) has been used as a source of the speech samples. The samples were carefully selected to represent those accents which EFL learners in the Czech Republic are likely to encounter, while variation between a more familiar and less familiar accents based on the geographical distance was crucial. Three native speakers’ accents were added as a measurement instrument. In the process of selection, the time spent abroad in a country where English is predominantly used as a first language, quality of the recording, and degree of accentedness have been considered. The voice quality, language proficiency, and age were not considered. The native language and gender function as variables. Potential problems could lie in the degree of representativeness of the selected sample for an accent of their native language. Each person’s accent is different, and it is only through generalizations that specific features are selected as representative of a certain English accent variety. The same elicitation paragraph is used in the recordings from the Speech Accent Archive, the paragraph was selected, because it “contains most of the consonants, vowels, and clusters of standard American English” (Weinberger, 2015): Please call Stella. Ask her to bring these things with her from the store: Six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of blue cheese, and maybe a snack for her brother Bob. We also need a small plastic snake and a big toy frog for the kids. She can scoop these things into three red bags, and we will go meet her Wednesday at the train station. The following speech samples were selected, listed by the speaker’s first language and country of origin in the order as they occurred: Dutch (the Netherlands), Russian (Russia), Spanish (Spain), Czech (the Czech Republic), English (Louisiana, USA), Hindi (India), French (Belgium), English (Scotland, UK), English (Wales, UK), Vietnamese (Vietnam). For more details regarding the speakers’ background and a phonetic transcription of their speech, see Appendix IV. Download 287.99 Kb. Share with your friends:
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