The Study On Chinese University Students’ Attitudes Towards Eight English Varieties Alongside "The Belt And Road"

In recent years,with the spread of World Englishes(WE),language attitudinal studies on world English varieties become hot in the academia.In our country,the implementation of "the Belt and Road" initiative has strengthened our communications with other countries,and English becomes the common language of communication and cooperation.In the process of using,English has split into various varieties with each country’s distinctive features and brought difficulties to understanding,which add the necessity of studying these English varieties.However,at present,there is little study on non-native English varieties,and none only focusing on the non-native English varieties alongside "the Belt and Road".In addition,none study has been conducted to explore the attitudinal differences of different majors,genders,or grades in China’s mainland.Therefore,the present study,different from previous studies,is conducted to survey and analyze the whole participants’ general attitudes and further explore the participants’ attitudes of different majors,gender and grades,only focusing on the eight non-native English varieties alongside "the Belt and Road".They respectively are the Englishes of India,Philippine,Thai,Vietnam,Saudi Arabia,Iran,Kazakhstan,and Poland(InE,PhE,ThE,ViE,SaE,IrE,KaE,and PoE).Four research questions are addressed in the present study:1)what are university students’ attitudes towards the eight non-standard English varieties in general?2)How do students of different majors(English majors and Non-English majors)perceive non-native English varieties and is there any difference?3)How do students of different genders(females and males)perceive non-native English varieties and is there any difference?4)How do students in different grades(freshmen and sophomores)perceive non-native English varieties and is there any difference?424(313 English majors,111 non-English majors)students from three 211 universities in Nanjing are involved in the present study.University students’ general attitudes towards eight non-native English varieties are explored based on the whole samples(N=424).Considering the imbalance in the ratios of majors and genders,systematic sampling method is employed by the present author to take 215(104 English majors,111 non-English majors)samples for the study on participants’attitudes of different majors,and 104(52 females,52 males)samples for the study on participants’ attitudes of different genders.Moreover,the study on participants’attitudes of different grades,based on 150 freshmen and 163 sophomores of English major’s,is also carried out.Verbal guise technique(VGT)is employed to measure students’ implicit attitudes towards English varieties.The participants are asked to rate speakers of corresponding English varieties on three dimensions of semantic differential scales(SDSs):power,solidarity and language quality.The findings are shown as follows:Firstly,in general,Chinese university students’attitudes towards the eight non-native English varieties are still conservative.They hold relatively positive attitudes towards KaE and PoE,while relatively negative attitudes towards SaE and ViE,especially ViE.Besides,for all of the tested English varieties,the solidarity dimension is rated obviously lower than the other two dimensions:power and linguistic quality,except PhE.Secondly,English majors obviously have more strict or negative attitudes towards non-native English varieties,while non-English majors hold more tolerant or acceptable attitudes.For ViE and IrE,the ratings of English majors are lower than non-English majors’,and the difference is statistically significant.In power dimension,the attitudinal differences are more obvious than the other two dimensions in the group.Thirdly,though females’evaluations on KaE,InE,and PhE are higher,but lower on SaE,and ViE than males’,there exit no statistically significant differences in each dimension among males’ and females’ attitudes towards these English varieties,according to the results of the independent t-test.Fourthly,it is found that sophomores’ attitudes tend to be neither too positive nor too negative.The sophomores hold a little bit more negative attitudes towards those English varieties whose rankings are higher,like KaE,PoE,PhE and ThE;and sophomores’ ratings on KaE in power dimension are significantly lower than freshmen’s.Besides,sophomores have relatively more tolerant attitudes to those countries which are perceived obviously negatively,like ViE,SaE and IrE;especially ratings on each dimension of ViE are significantly higher than freshmen’s.The above research results have the following implications for English teaching and learning:In terms of English Teaching,teachers should make students(especially English majors)learn more about WE varieties in class.Native-like English pronunciation shouldn’t be the only factor to evaluate students’ English pronunciation.Actions should be taken to promote World Englishes awareness and multi-cultural consciousness.So that,in Chinese context,the situation of taking native English as teaching model can be gradually changed.With respect to English learning,students should change past English learning paradigm of taking native English as standard,and try to learn more about various non-native English varieties in the world,so that the practical ability of English can be improved.