Although many researchers have studied language attitudes in the last three decades, none of the studies have been conducted in the hospital setting, where there are more serious consequences for those working with patients being labeled linguistically "incompetent," as charges of incompetence in language are apt to lead to charges of incompetence in other areas of mastery as well (e.g., Ryan, 1983). This study examines the attitudes of a sample of nurses from three Portland-area hospitals towards nonnative English speaking physicians. The subjects, 156 medical-surgical nurses, listened to three anonymous audiotaped physicians who were from three different ethnic backgrounds: American, Japanese and Persian. The physicians were first all recorded reading a short patient history and giving a verbal order directed toward a nurse. This was the formal context. For the informal context, the physicians gave an impromptu response to a question regarding their future plans. The nurses rated each physician twice, once for each context, using the Speech Evaluation Instrument (SEI), a semantic differential scale using bipolar adjectives developed by Zahn and Hopper (1985). Results indicated that there was a significant positive relationship between a physician's pronunciation and a nurse's perceptions of his medical competency, as measured by the SEI, with the native English speaking physician receiving a higher rating than the two nonnative English speaking physicians. The native Japanese speaking physician, who had the strongest accent, received the lowest ratings on the SEI. There was also a significant positive relationship between the context the physician was speaking in and the ratings he received on the SEI, with the informal context receiving a higher rating for all three physicians than the formal context. If a physician's pronunciation or speech style causes nurses, not to mention patients, to evaluate him/her negatively, then one implication of this study is for the need for more pronunciation work and accent reduction exercises not only in the English as a second/foreign language classroom, but also as a continued offering for nonnative English speaking hospital personnel in teaching hospitals. Another implication relates to the need for better preparing nurses to work and communicate successfully with nonnative English speaking physicians, other hospital personnel, and patients by offering transcultural nursing classes in nursing school and making it a mandatory part of every nurse's education.

Every Japanese high school student studies English for at least six years. However, the results of this study, especially in speaking, are poor. In the present study, educational, sociocultural, and linguistic obstacles to learning for the Japanese student are considered. An educational system oriented toward passing college and university entrance examinations has distorted English curriculum. Furthermore, English teachers in Japan lack proficiency in the language. The teaching staffs and materials of language schools are poorly regulated. Concern with relative status, group identification, and loss of face acts as a deterrent to learning. For many learners the wrong type of motivation may exist. Consideration of phonological obstacles was limited to the area of rhythm (speed, stress, word grouping, pausing). An error analysis of the speech of twenty-five Japanese students of college age was carried out using recordings of an accent inventory. Speech was recorded both aurally and visually. No comparison of English and Japanese rhythm was made either aurally or visually. The students' speech was also rated by three native speakers for the amount of foreign accent in the area of rhythm. Three possible causes of errors were considered: language transfer, intralingual interference, and the universal hierarchy of difficulty. The source of the majority of errors was found to be due to interference. The Japanese were found to have problems in segmentation and stressing due primarily to the fact that English is a stress-timed language and Japanese is a syllable-timed one. The number of types of errors and total phonation and pause time correlated with the foreign accent rating. The best solution to the educational obstacles facing the Japanese English learner would be the divorcement of English from the entrance examinations and a reeducation of English teachers. Native-speaking English teachers should be made aware of the cultural constraints which limit the Japanese student's learning. Future teaching programs and materials should place more emphasis on intonation and rhythm for the Japanese English learner, particularly in the grouping of words.

The present study investigated the perceptions and attitudes of two groups each of ESL teachers and students in the United States regarding World Englishes (WE) pronunciations before and after watching a video on WE accents. Data gathered via online surveys were analyzed using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. The results show that the perceptions of the teachers in the study ranged from somewhat negative to mildly positive, both pre- and post-video, which is consistent with Brown's (1993) findings that teachers' perceptions changed little if at all after being briefly exposed to WE stimuli. The education of the teachers in this study did not seem to influence their responses, either. Both groups of teachers responded almost identically even though the Midwest (MW) teachers' education ranged from no TESOL training to MA TESOL and all the teachers in the Northwest (NW) had MA TESOL degrees. These teachers' exposure to WE topics also varied greatly from teacher to teacher. Although the results of the study could not establish a correlation between lack of WE exposure and lack of WE classroom implementation, the teacher responses were, again, consistent with the literature in that the advantages of WE implementation are often appreciated only after extensive training on the matter. Student results were slightly more encouraging than their teachers', as students were generally more enthusiastic about WE before and after stimuli. A majority of students surveyed expressed they would like their teachers to incorporate more WE materials into their lessons and, after watching the video, all but one student indicated they would take an Accents of the World class as they considered it "important to learn about the ways people in other parts of the world speak English."

This language attitudes study used a matched guise technique to compare participant reactions of American-accented English to Japanese-accented English. Participants (n = 40) were college educated adults living in the Portland area who completed an online survey which measured characteristics related to Status, Solidarity, and Dynamism using semantic differential Likert scales. Results showed that while Japanese-accented English received less favorable ratings on the Status and Solidarity dimensions on a statistically significant level, the small effect size may have indicated that the differences were negligible. Interpreting the results from the data through the World Englishes Kachruvian paradigm, it is argued that English learners and users would benefit by focusing more on achieving intelligibility than on attaining perfect control of an idealized variety of English.

Purpose: The purpose of the present study was to determine if accent related discrimination exists in the work place for persons who speak with an Indian, Pakistani, or Bangladeshi accent. An additional purpose was to explore the participants’ knowledge and willingness to enroll in accent modification therapy and their general feelings regarding this type of therapy. Method: A 57 item survey that was developed to address our research questions was distributed through Survey Monkey to various listservs, organizations and personal contacts. These methods yielded a total of 279 participants, with 110 participants included in the present study. Results: Majority of participants reported that they do not think their accent is difficult to understand and also felt that their accent was accepted. No significant trends were found between length of time living and working in the United States and accent discrimination. However, per participant report, discrimination appears to be more prevalent in the initial part of the employment process (applying for a position and during the beginning portion of their employment). Most participants had never heard of and/or previously enrolled in accent modification therapy. In addition, approximately half said that they would not voluntarily enroll in accent modification therapy, but the remaining participants either responded that they would consider enrolling or they would definitely enroll. Further, half the participants reported that they would not have negative feelings if it was recommended by their employer that they enroll in therapy. Conclusions: This preliminary data suggests that accent discrimination towards individuals who speak with an Indian, Pakistani, or Bangladeshi accent does exist in the workplace. Results also indicate a disconnect between existence of discrimination and awareness of discrimination, either due to the survey limitations or an emerging awareness on the part of the participants. Additionally, few participants reported knowledge of accent modification therapy. Negative feelings towards enrolling in accent modification therapy were within in minority. This data, in addition to reasons to enroll in therapy provided by participants, will aid speech-language pathologists in creating appropriate therapy programs for this unique population. / text

This thesis investigates the phonological ability of exceptional second language (L2) learners of English and their levels of motivation. This study is the first of its kind to do a large-scale examination of L2 learners whose first languages (L1s) do not belong to the same Indo-European language family as English. Fifteen non-native speakers (NNSs) of English filled out a questionnaire and produced four speech samples, including a picture description task, paragraph reading task, sentence reading and word reading task. Fifteen native speaker (NS) controls also produced the same speech samples. Four NSs judged all participants' accents. Six NNSs scored as highly as NSs on some of the speech segments using a 2-standard deviation (SD) cut-off point. There was no significant correlation between their scores on pronunciation and motivation.

How to improve the skill of speaking English is a major challenge for English learners in Taiwan nowadays. This project focuses on issues of pronunciation as the starting point to examine the problems of learning English, and issues of identity transformation in the language-learning process. Then it addresses the concept of enunciation as a way to facilitate English learners to establish their confidence in, and ownership of, the target language. This project is designed not only for discussing issues of improving the teaching and learning of English pronunciation, but also for explicating how students can gain their own voices and define their subjectivity during their English-learning process.

The purpose of this study was (1) the selection of consonant clusters of both English and Japanese; (2) the comparison and analysis of the clusters on the phonemic as well as phonetic level; and (3) the formulation of a hierarchy of difficulties encountered by the Japanese students in learning English consonant clusters.

No description available.

This study used three instruments to examine the current state of the teaching of ESOL pronunciation. These instruments included a survey of 62 teachers, another survey of 508 ESOL students, and a comparative study of ten pronunciation textbooks in widespread use since 1990. The purpose of the study was to characterize the teaching of pronunciation at present through the voices of the teachers, the opinions of the students, and the content of the textbooks. The study also identified the approaches and types of activities being proposed by the experts and recommended additional activities as well as a rationale for their use. The responses from the teacher survey indicated that there is little formal teaching of pronunciation in adult education programs although teachers deal with pronunciation mistakes in an incidental manner. Results from the student survey indicated that false beginner adult learners strongly favor practicing pronunciation and that they want their teachers to correct their mistakes. The descriptive study of the textbooks showed three different tendencies: a traditional curriculum based on the sound and the word as the point of departure of the lesson, another based on the communicative context as the point of departure, and a third that proposed an integrative model, that is, listening, speaking, accuracy, and fluency where pronunciation accuracy is emphasized. There were discrepancies in the selection of phonetic symbols, use of metalanguage, and types of activities. There is a consensus on the importance of listening, the use of the tape recorder, and outside class activities. At the onset of the study, the researcher hypothesized that teachers did not address pronunciation in their classes. The survey, however, indicated that in spite of the fact that pronunciation is not considered as part of the curriculum, it is addressed by the teachers at least in an indirect manner. The results of this study confirmed the fact that students enjoy practicing the sounds of the language. The comparative study of the pronunciation textbooks showed that 90% of the books are intended for intermediate or advanced learners, thus revealing a surprising lack of pronunciation materials for ESOL false beginners.