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The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics
[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 25, No. 0, pp.1150-1169
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 31 Jan 2025
Received 09 Apr 2025 Revised 30 May 2025 Accepted 27 Jun 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.25..202508.1150

Toward Global English Pronunciations: Korean Pre-Service Teachers’ Changes in Attitudes Toward the Lingua Franca Core and Accentedness

In Young Yang ; Hyunkee Ahn
(First author) Associate Professor, Department of English Language and Literature Korea National University of Transportation inyoung@ut.ac.kr
(Corresponding author) Professor, Department of English Language Education Seoul National University ahnhk@snu.ac.kr


© 2025 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This study investigated the attitudes toward pronunciation of English as a Lingua Franca Core and foreign accentedness among Korean pre-service English teachers, with a focus on how these attitudes evolved during a 15-week course on World Englishes. The course introduced diverse English varieties and their accents, explored their formation, explained the concept of the Lingua Franca Core, addressed the distinction between speech accentedness and intelligibility, and emphasized the communicative value of English as an international language. These instructional themes were aligned with and addressed within the goals, core values, and competencies of the Korean National English Curriculum. Changes in attitudes were assessed across three components—affective, cognitive, and behavioral—using two pre- and post-surveys as well as an accentedness rating task to examine the multidimensional nature of language attitudes. The results showed that the participants displayed affective shifts, with a lower preference for Standard English and greater acceptance of World Englishes. They also evaluated their own Korean-accented English as more communicative, signaling an increase in positive affect toward global English varieties. They exhibited cognitive changes in their tolerance of pronunciation deviations from native norms; however, the attitudinal change was not substantial. In rating accentedness for Englishes from Inner, Outer, and Expanding Circles, the participants showed statistically significant changes; however, the effect size indicated that the change was negligible, suggesting that a semester-long intervention was insufficient to bring about behavioral changes in attitudes toward World Englishes.

Keywords:

World Englishes, language attitudes, pre-service English teachers, attitudinal changes, accentedness, lingua franca core

Acknowledgments

This was supported by Korea National University of Transportation Industry-Academy Cooperation Foundation in 2024.

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