American or British English Pronunciation? A study on Swedish Upper Secondary school students’ choices of and attitudes towards different varieties of English

Abstract

This study investigates attitudes towards British and American English among students in an upper secondary school in Sweden. The study also aims at finding out to what extent factors such as TV, film and other media influence them regarding their English pronunciation. A survey was conducted on 76 students of which 64 surveys were used in the results. The results were then compared to two previous studies, one performed in Denmark in 1999 and one performed in Norway in 2010. The results showed that most of the students claimed to speak American English, closely followed by British English. Although most of them spoke American English, more students had chosen British English as their goal dialect. Most of the respondents were equally positive towards British and American English. TV and films was found to be the number one influence on the students’ pronunciation and most students did not mind if their teacher had a different dialect of English than themselves. In the comparison with previous studies, similar results were found.