‘Mind your Local Accent’ Does accent training resonate to college students’ English use?

Abstract

The recent development of English as a lingua franca (ELF) has encouraged language policy makers and educators to view the English language and ELT from an alternative but critical perspective that challenges some language ideologies, such as standard language and linguistic imperialism. Current ELT practices seem to neglect the trend towards the development of the global status of English. In addition, ELT is still largely native-oriented and less ELF-oriented. A Chinese university is the context of this case study. From an ELF perspective, this paper addresses some ELT issues, particularly with regard to teaching pronunciation, through the analysis of two documents and a discussion of the student participants’ interview comments. It is argued that current pronunciation teaching is still native-oriented and based on the English as a foreign language (EFL) perspective. The ELF concept is emergent and has not been fully recognised. This paper proposes a teaching approach called Teaching of Pronunciation for Intercultural Communication (ToPIC), which suggests ELF-informed pronunciation teaching strategies for intercultural communication in relation to students’ wider language-use goals in the conclusion.