Attitudes of German high school students toward different varieties of English

What is it about?

In line with international developments in applied linguistics, school curricula in Germany have begun to demand that Global Englishes be included in English Language Teaching (ELT). However, the perspectives of German school students, the main addressees of such a shift, are little explored. This paper investigates the attitudes to and familiarity with different Englishes among 160 German high school students, using a mix of direct and indirect attitude elicitation methods and a nationality identification task. Informants rated (speakers of) Standard Southern British (StSBrE), Standard American (StAmE), Indian (IndE), German (GerE) and African/Kenyan English (AfrE/KenE). Multivariate analyses revealed that informants are most familiar with StSBrE and StAmE. StSBrE, and to a smaller degree, StAmE are perceived as reference norms, while English as a Second Language (ESL) varieties, especially IndE, are rated negatively for competence, professionalism, and intelligibility. Familiarity with specific English as a First/Native Language (ENL) varieties is linked to more positive attitudes. The observed congruence of directly and indirectly elicited attitudes suggests that changes put forth in language curricula have not influenced language attitudes (yet).

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