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Download - EnglishAgenda - British Council

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Tables 5 and 6 are important in illustrating participants’ responses to statementsconcerning factors that might help in successful intercultural communicationbetween interlocutors who do not use English as a first language. The results showthe rankings with a lower mean score (shown at the top of each bar) representinga higher level of importance (1 = most important – 6 = least important). Theresults between the initial and final questionnaire are quite similar but thereare a number of differences that are worth discussing. In terms of similarities inboth questionnaires, the respondents rated knowledge of how other non-nativespeakers of English use English as the most important factor. It should also benoted that knowledge of native-speaker-like grammar and knowledge of nativespeakercultures was rated quite low, again suggesting that native-speaker-likeEnglish and communicative norms are not of particular relevance or interest tothese participants.However, there is also some ambiguity here in that native-like pronunciationwas rated as an important factor in the final questionnaire. While this may be ananomaly, Table 7 suggests that this is a feature of the participants’ attitudes andone that changes little over the course. Participants generally rated English spokenin the traditional native-speaker countries of the US, UK and Australia as moststandard. There was general disagreement that English spoken in the ‘expandingcircle’ countries, where it does not have an official status, was standard.5.0 5.04.5 4.54.0 4.03.5 3.53.0 3.02.5 2.52.0 2.01.5 1.51.0 1.00.5 0.50.0 0.00Standard Englishis spoken by thenative speakingcountries (e.g.England, theUnited States,Australia).Standard Englishis spoken bythose countriescolonised bynative speakingcountries (e.g.Singapore, India,Hong Kong).Standard Englishis spoken byany country thatuses English (e.g.Thailand, Mexico,China).Table 7: attitudes towards different types of EnglishesQuestionnaire 1Questionnaire 2There is noStandard EnglishIntercultural Awareness Thailand | 289

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