Exploring Male and Female Iranian EFL Learners’ Attitude towards Native and Non-native Varieties of English

Abstract

This study investigated whether Iranian EFL learners are aware of different varieties of English spoken throughout the world and whether they have tendency towards a particular variety of English. Likewise, it explored the attitudes of Iranian EFL learners towards the native and non-native varieties of English. Moreover, it made an attempt to investigate whether such attitudes are gender-oriented. To this end, 30 intermediate male and female Iranian EFL learners whose age ranged from 22 to 30 formed the sample population of this study. They responded to three questionnaires. Then, the collected data were subjected to a one-way repeated measure ANOVA, Fisher's LSD post hoc test, and independent-samples t-tests. The main conclusion of this study was that Iranian EFL learners do not believe in a single world English anymore; instead, they gradually believe in "world Englishes". They are indeed receding from that perfect English accent and are accepting other Englishes for their communication with people around the world. In addition, although the participants accepted non-native varieties, having tendency towards American and British accents reveals the fact that they have positive attitudes towards language learning.

Keywords

• world englishes
• standard English
• English varieties
• language learning attitude
• Gender