A Preliminary Study on Chinese EFL Learners' Attitude towards Their Accent.

The paper evaluates Chinese EFL (English Foreign Language) learners’ attitudinal responses toward Chinese accent. Questionnaires administered among 81 intermediate proficiency EFL learners who were from China and UK (70 of whom were university students, 11 of whom were university English teachers). Results show clearly that the respondents do not have significant negative attitude towards their own non-native accent-Chinese accent. When asked if people would respect them more if they pronounced English well, the majority agree. About forty percent of the respondents fell that pronunciation played an important role in their communication problems, and their pronunciation difficulties mainly are the suprasegmentals that generally have little effect on intelligibility.