Polglish in polish eyes: What english studies majors think about their pronunciation in English

Abstract

This paper reports on selected results of a large-scale questionnaire study conducted among Polish students of English. Continuing the tradition of pronunciation attitude surveys in Poland, the present study concentrates on a possible relationship between what students perceive as correct pronunciation and a Polish accent in English in correspondence to the level of studies (BA vs. MA) and gender. Supporting the results reported in earlier studies, the study shows that a vast majority of respondents want their pronunciation to be correct and would want to speak like native speakers, even if it required a lot of their time and effort; moreover, even though students may have doubts about success, they would prefer their pronunciation not to be Polish-accented. The decomposition of the data shows an effect of education level and gender on the results, with females less likely to claim that their pronunciation does not have Polish accent features, and MA students less concerned with Polish features in their English pronunciation than the BA students. This may suggest that a strongly negative attitude towards ‘Polglish’ depends on the education level and experience on the one hand, and a gender-specific approach to self-assessed accent features on the other.