Pronunciation Model Selection, or Do You Speak American?
Biljana Čubrović, Andrej Bjelaković · Belgrade English Language and Literature Studies · 2020
Presented are the results of a survey about English pronunciation attitudes and preferences aimed at first-year students of English language and literature.The main aim of the survey was to shed light on the advance of General American (GA) as the preferred pronunciation model in recent years.The survey questions cover the main features that distinguish GA from SBS (Southern British Standard), such as rhoticity, t-voicing, articulation of the bath and lot vowels as well as the presence of the low back merger.The majority of respondents report that they prefer using GA, while they prefer listening to SBS.The results suggest, however, that the majority of test subjects use a mixture of sorts, with few students being consistent in their usage of specific pronunciation features.