Understanding Varieties of English A study about 9th grade pupils’ ability to understand English accents.

Abstract

Due to the increase in globalization understanding different varieties of English has become vital in order to be able to communicate with people and understand public announcements while abroad. In the curricula Lpo94 and Lgr11, there are goals regarding the understanding of regional varieties of English, which the pupils should have attained by the 9th year of compulsory school. The aim of this study was to see if and to what extent the pupils of a class in the 9th grade understand five different but common varieties of English. The pupils got to listen to audio tracks with speakers of the different varieties, which were South African English, Australian English, Indian English, Scottish English and African-American Vernacular English and then the pupils got to fill out a questionnaire about their understanding of the different varieties. The results show that a majority of the pupils had no problem understanding the accents even though they found some of the accents more difficult to understand than others. The conclusion of this study is that the participating pupils do understand regional varieties of English to a large extent and therefore have attained the goals in the curriculum regarding the understanding of regional speech of English.