A Quantitative Survey on Iranian English Learners' Attitudes toward Varieties of English: World English or World Englishes?

Pishghadam Reza, Sabouri Fahime. A Quantitative Survey on Iranian English Learners' Attitudes toward Varieties of English: World English or World Englishes? // English Language and Literature Studies Vol. 1, No. 1; June 2011. P. 86-95This empirical study seeks to investigate Iranian English learners' attitudes toward different varieties of English in relation to the perspective of the theory of "World Englishes". Making use of a modification of matched guise technique, 165 English learners were asked to listen to a text read by native speakers of the following accent groups: British, Persian, American, and Arabic. Subjects, then, recorded their attitudes toward each of the readers using a semantic differential scale. Based on the results, the learners considered American accent to be quite superior to the others. They, also, considered people with American accent to be better teachers. These findings reveal the fact that Iranian English learners still believe in the existence of a World English rather than World Englishes.