In 2011, I undertook a research project to examine if English majors at a Thai university considered speaking English with a Thai accent to be acceptable and if they were confident about speaking English with a Thai accent. The sample of the research study was undergraduate Thai English majors at Walailak University in the 2010–2011 academic year.

The distributed questionnaire collected demographic data to determine whether concerns related to accent were affected by gender, year of study, geographic origin (home province), or grade point average.

The results of the questionnaire that were most intriguing were related to the difference in perception of first- and fourth-year students. Nearly 90% of freshman responded that they should attempt to imitate the accent of a native speaker of English, but this number decreased to less than 50% for seniors. In the responses to the open-ended questions, many of the fourth-year students stated that intelligibility was of more importance than nativeness. Additionally, many indicated that instead of attempting to imitate the native speaker accent, their time and effort would be better spent trying to improve their English language skills in other areas (Zinck, 2012).

This fairly dramatic difference in responses brought up the question of what could be responsible for this divergence. One possibility was that that the fourth-year students responded to the questionnaire after they had recently completed their Cooperative Education internships.

The Cooperative Education Program at Walailak University gives students the opportunity to gain real-world work experience as an intern in a wide variety of business settings. The objectives of the Cooperative Education Program include the following:

1. To promote closer cooperation with public and private enterprises in human resources development
2. To develop students to their fullest potential prior to work placement
3. To update curricular content and teaching/learning approaches in line with the needs and demands of the skilled labor market
4. To promote good working relationships between the university and business enterprises through the linkage of students in work placement (Cooperative Education at Walailak University, n.d.)

Typical placements for English majors include working in hotels as front desk staff or in food and beverage departments. Tour companies are another common internship site, and students work as guides or general office staff. English majors are also often requested to intern as assistants in immigration or tourist police offices. Due to the changing demographics of Thai tourism, an increasing number of tourists are nonnative speakers of English (NNS). According to Bert Van Walbeek, chairman of the Thailand chapter of the Pacific Asia Travel Association, there has been “a shift in global economics [which] has prompted a trend for visitors to Phuket to be more likely to come from within the Asia Pacific region” (quoted in Mulloy, 2011). The intern positions mentioned above are precisely the types of settings where student interns would be speaking in English with people whose first language is not English. This NNS to NNS interaction in English directly affects students’ level of communicative competence in English and their job performance. The students need to discern that they are not speaking with native English speakers and, as described by Walker (2010), “adjust their speech and other aspects of spoken communication so that they become more (or less) like that of their interlocutors” (p. 197).

Taking the above into consideration, it's possible that the questionnaire results from fourth-year respondents could be attributable to the real-world work experience that they recently completed when they were conversing with other NNS during their Cooperative Education internships. Therefore, the objective of this study was to investigate the perceptions of Thai English majors participating in a professional internship program. More specifically, it aimed to examine how important they perceived the native English speaker accent to be, and their level of confidence in speaking English with a Thai accent, with demographic factors in consideration.

The sample group of this research study was 54 fourth-year Thai English majors at Walailak University in the 2011–2012 academic year. To collect data, I distributed a Thai language questionnaire to the students before and after their Cooperative Education internship placement. The questionnaires were originally written in English and then translated into Thai by Bhassara Zinck before being distributed to students. (The original English versions of the questionnaire are in the Appendix.)

The first two items on the questionnaire collect demographic data: gender and grade point average in English courses. The third item focuses on the amount of English spoken during their internship placement. In the pre-placement questionnaire, respondents are asked to give their opinion on how frequently they will speak English; in the post-placement questionnaire, the respondents are asked about how much English they actually spoke. The fourth question deals with their sense of importance of the native English speaker accent. The respondents were asked to rank the opinion from not important (1) to extremely important (5) and then list their reasons in order of significance. In the fifth and final item on the questionnaire, the respondents were asked to rank their level of confidence when speaking English with a Thai accent from not confident (1) to extremely confident (5) and then list their reasons in order of significance.

Percentage distribution was used to display the results, content analysis was applied to the reasoning answers, and chi-square was performed to examine the demographic information as factors in the importance of native English speaker accent to Thai English majors participating in a professional internship program and their confidence in speaking English with a Thai accent using the alpha level of 0.05 to determine significance differences.

The results from the questionnaire, with a 100% response rate, show that the majority of the Thai English majors participating in the professional internship program were female (five times the number of males). The most common average grades in English courses received by the students (two-thirds) were B and C+. In addition, one-third of the students stated that they would speak and had spoken English sometimes during their internship, and half stated that they would speak and had spoken English often during their Cooperative Education assignment. This indicates that the students were able to reasonably predict the amount of English they would be speaking during their internships.

Figure 1. Importance of Native Speaker Accent

Figure 2. Confidence Level Speaking English With a Thai Accent

Figure 1 illustrates the results related to the importance of native speaker accent. The dark green bar is pre-internship and the light green is post-internship. The changes don’t appear to be dramatic, but they do exist when looking at very important which fell 5% and extremely important which fell by almost 8%. The drop in perceived importance shown in Figure 1 might be due to their experiences speaking with other NNS—Russians, Koreans, Chinese, and others. The respondents’ pre-internship comments focused on professionalism and spoken communicative competence. The post-internship comments had many similar comments to the pre-internship, but there were some comments that were not present previously, for example, “many nations have different accents” and “a native speaker accent is not necessary for my work.”

Figure 2 shows the results of the final major question in the survey, and it is related to level of confidence when speaking with a Thai accent. The dark green bar is pre-internship and the light green is post-internship. The respondents’ comments related to confidence level indicate that there wasn’t much of a difference between pre- and post-internship. This could be due to the emphasis by instructors on the native speaker accent. Despite the fact that they have had this real-world working experience with other NNS in which they are able to communicate well enough to conduct business, they are still lacking confidence when speaking English with a Thai accent.

The relationship between gender and the importance of native English speaker accent to the participants and also the relationship between gender and their confidence in speaking English with a Thai accent are not statistically significant (p > 0.05). Additionally, the relationship between average grade for English subjects and the importance of native English speaker accent to the participants and the relationship between average grade for English subjects and their confidence in speaking English with a Thai accent are not statistically significant (p > 0.05) either.

The findings of this research project indicate that after their real-world work experience, many of the Cooperative Education students are sensing that native speaker accent is not as important as they once thought. But despite this realization, they still lack confidence in their accent, and this could very well be due to how and what they've been taught about pronunciation. The possible implications for teaching would support Jenkins (2000) in that “there really is no justification for doggedly persisting in referring to an item as ‘an error’ if the vast majority of the world’s L2 English speakers produce and understand it” (p. 109). The implementation of the Lingua Franca Core could be highly beneficial to the students in this context and should be seriously considered in the Thai English language classroom.

References

Cooperative Education at Walailak University. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://webhost.wu.ac.th/coop/eng_info.asp

Jenkins, J. (2000). The phonology of English as an international language: New models, new norms, new goals. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Mulloy, M. (2011, October 5). PATA: Phuket should brace for a "new breed of tourist". Phuket Gazette. Retrieved from http://www.phuketgazette.net

Walker, R. (2010). Teaching pronunciation of English as a lingua franca. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Zinck, J. (2012). Thai English major’s perspectives on English with an accent. TESOL Higher Education Interest Section News, 31(2).

Pre-placement Questionnaire
Circle the appropriate choice or write the information in the space provided.
1. Gender: M F
2. Average grade in ENG courses: A B+ B C+ C D+ D F
3. How frequently do you think you will speak English during your Cooperative Education assignment?

Never           Rarely           Sometimes            Often         Always

4. Rank the importance of having an accent like a native speaker of English when you speak English, ranging from 1 as “not important at all” to 5 as “extremely Important.”

1    2    3    4   5

List your reasons, in order of significance.

1____________________________________________________________________

2____________________________________________________________________

3____________________________________________________________________

5. Rank your level of confidence in your own accent when speaking English, ranging from 1 as “not confident at all” to 5 as “extremely confident.”

1   2   3   4   5

List your reasons, in order of significance.

1____________________________________________________________________

2____________________________________________________________________

3____________________________________________________________________

Post-placement Questionnaire
Circle the appropriate choice or write the information in the space provided.
1. Gender: M F
2. Average grade for ENG courses: A B+ B C+ C D+ D F
3. How frequently did you speak English during your Cooperative Education Assignment?

Never    Rarely    Sometimes     Often    Always

4. Rank the importance of having an accent like a native speaker of English when you speak English, ranging from 1 as “not important at all” to 5 as “extremely important.”

1   2   3   4   5

List your reasons, in order of significance.

1____________________________________________________________________

2____________________________________________________________________

3____________________________________________________________________

5. Rank your level of confidence in your own accent when speaking English, ranging from 1 as “not confident at all” to 5 as “extremely confident.”

1    2    3    4    5

List your reasons, in order of significance.

1____________________________________________________________________

2____________________________________________________________________

3____________________________________________________________________

John Zinck is a lecturer in the School of Liberal Arts, Walailak University, in Nakhon Sri Thammarat, Thailand. His research interests include English language learners' perspectives on accent and second language acquisition.