earticle

영어

American English, among linguistic variants of English, possesses a dominant status in Korea as a medium of international communication and a subject of English teaching. However, recent interests to cultural diversity and a new TOEIC system throw some light on other dialects of English such as British, Canadian or Australian English. This study investigates college students’ views and learnability on the pronunciation of British English in terms of survey and listening tests. A total of 124 college students who were taking a Phonetics course participated in the research. In class, they were taught theoretical linguistic aspects of two variants of English such as differences and similarities of British and American English, and practiced their pronunciation and intonation. Pre- and post- listening tests were administered to measure the students’ improvement in listening skills. Survey was carried out in the aftermath of the course to examine how their views were affected on British vs. American English. According to the survey, the subjects considered American English more natural, friendly, familiar, and useful than British English, having been more exposed to the former. Interestingly, they have a desire to learn other variants of English in the globe. The listening test result revealed that subjects’ listening skill was significantly improved after class. The current study indicates that the subject of teaching English should not be limited to American English and that English educators should introduce a new pedagogical approach to fulfill the students’ growing interests to other variants of English and enhance their communicative English skills.