Is it enough to be understood? A study of teacher attitudes towards accent in the EFL classroom

Sammanfattning: This study investigates teacher attitudes towards accent in the EFL classroom. The central theoretical base for this study is English as a lingua franca (ELF), which proposes that intelligibility is the key to communication in English between people from different backgrounds. EFL, together with the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) document from 2018 that removed a nativelike pronunciation altogether as a requirement for a higher language proficiency, seem to be the biggest proponent for intelligibility as the goal. On the other hand, much of the previous research claims that both teachers and students regard a nativelike accent as an important trait, and that a distinct L1 accent is viewed as something negative (Jenkins, 2005; Chan, 2016; Candan & Inal, 2020; Tabataba et al., 2018). Data for this study was collected from interviews with four Swedish EFL teachers about their attitudes towards accents, and if/how they do teach accents in their classes. The data shows that while the teachers initially described intelligibility as the main goal for their students to achieve, they also pointed out that there are still many advantages of speaking with a nativelike accent, in terms of gaining status and respect. The results also showed that the teachers themselves believe that the students have less respect for a teacher who speaks with an accent. Although the study is quite limited in scope, the results indicate that a larger study of a similar kind with similar results, in Sweden, could create a need for questioning how to raise the status of L1 accented English and whether Skolverket should include more explicit aims regarding accents in their syllabi.