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This somewhat contradicts the earlier responses (Table 4) which suggestedthat speaking English to native speakers was not high on the participants’ list ofreasons for learning English. Such ambivalent attitudes towards different varietiesof English are further reinforced by the interview data. Extract 13 illustrates whatappears to be a general awareness among the students that English is not ‘owned’by the original native speakers of the language and that there are a range ofEnglishes, but at the same time extract 14 suggests ‘native English’ is viewed asmost prestigious even when used with other ‘non-native speakers’.Extract 13Tima: Nowadays English becomes like the official language in many countriesnot only in the UK or the US and. each country have their own culture so eventhough they are using English they have some things that something that aredifferent from in the US or in the UK so if if we got to learn all of them I think wewill. I think we it can make us like open up our mind like betterTip: Nowadays English is truly global language and people in many nationalitiesin the world use English to communicate and I think it’s interesting. to to learnabout English much more than in English in the UK or in the United StatesExtract 14Nun: Singapore they have their own English and something I think it is ok it’s partof the way they communicate yeah ... I don’t feel bad about them but sometime itjust not quite nice or beautiful as beautiful as err the native speakerTima: English is from basically from the UK right and then to the US so are theyare like the what to say the origins of English so if we basically talk about Englishin Asian countries then it might give a weird feeling to meThe participants were asked to rate their agreement with a range of statementsrelated to features of intercultural communication (the full statements can be seenin Appendix 2). As Table 8 shows the results were very similar between the twoquestionnaires with the mean score for the first questionnaire being 4.1 and forthe final 4.0. This represents agreement with the statements with no statementdropping below a neutral rating (3). There was strong agreement that languagesand cultures were linked and that learning about culture was part of languagelearning. There was also strong agreement that cultures can be interpreteddifferently by different individuals and that others should not be judged by thesupposed standards of one’s own culture. Finally participants rated a number ofquestions comparing cultures, Table 9. Here the responses were largely neutralor negative which suggested the participants had a good sense of the relativity ofcultures and that such comparisons were not possible or were negative.While the questionnaire does not suggest a change in attitudes over the course,the participants reported having a greater awareness of a number of aspects ofintercultural communication as a result of the course in the interviews. In particularmany students discussed having a greater awareness of the danger of stereotypingothers and being ‘open minded’ in their approach to communicating with others.290 | Intercultural Awareness Thailand