Unintentional Chaos in Vocabulary and Spelling: British and American English Preferences of English Teachers
Journal Title: Ankara Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi - Year 2017, Vol 8, Issue 1
Abstract
In Turkey, in order to become an English teacher one must have a bachelor’s degree from a variety of language-related departments. Considering that the variety of departments’ syllabuses at instruction in such departments is based heavily on specific fields, language proficiency and attitudes of their graduates towards the language turns into a question. This question gets even more significant in terms of their proficiency and attitudes in the two most common varieties of the language, namely, British English (BE) and American English (AE). In this study, it was aimed to find out English Language Teachers' vocabulary and spelling preferences and their attitudes in adopting BE or AE. The data were collected with a four-staged instrument which consisted of word-translation from Turkish to English, sentence translation, standardization of a paragraph and an attitude survey. The results of the study indicated a complexity in terms of vocabulary preferences while BE was found dominant in spelling. Participants defined themselves as BE users in general; however, their preferences in vocabulary items seemed in balance between the two varieties, which was related to a mismatch between the expressed preferences of some participants and the results of the vocabulary analysis carried out. BE was reported to be more popular in grammar, however, the examples provided by the participants were not considered sufficient. Besides, BE was considered more prestigious and the majority of the participants wanted to be perfect in BE. It should also be noted that the participants were of the opinion that both varieties should be taught.
Authors and Affiliations
Sıla Ay, Tarık Uzun
Keywords
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