Proceedings of the - British Association for Applied Linguistics

Accents of English and Listening Comprehension: Evidence of Conflict between ELT Handbooks and Teachers’ Practices
Vasiliki Kanellou
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Introduction
Accents of English and Listening
Comprehension: Evidence of Conflict
between ELT Handbooks and Teachers’
Practices
Vasiliki Kanellou
Cardiff University
vikanellou@yahoo.com
Listening to and processing the pronunciation of speakers of different
native and no-native varieties of English presents a challenge for many
learners; as Buck (2001: 35) puts it: “L2 listeners sometimes have
considerable problems when they hear a new accent for the first time… an
unfamiliar accent can make comprehension almost impossible for the
listener”. Nevertheless, the existence of different regional varieties of
English in one country and the emergence of World Englishes create the
need for learners of English to be able to understand a wide variety of
accents. Thus, the general consensus among authors of recently published
and currently used ELT handbooks (for example, see Celce-Murcia &
Olshtain, 2001 or Harmer, 2007) is that accent is a very important variable
in listening comprehension and exposure to different accents of English
must be achieved through the listening element of any language course (for
further information, see Kanellou, 2009).
Research Methodology
In order to discover if EFL teachers share this view and if this is reflected
in their teaching practices, a questionnaire was completed by a
representative sample of 47 EFL teachers in Thessaloniki, Greece. One
questionnaire question explored the extent to which teachers are aware of
the need to expose learners to various accents of English and another
question explored the extent to which such an exposure takes place in the
language classroom. The mean response for each questionnaire item was
calculated and the paired-samples t-test was undertaken in order to
determine if any differences in the scores were statistically significant.
Interviews were conducted with 12 out of the 47 teachers that participated
in the questionnaire survey in order to discuss the questionnaire results.
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