Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Teacher And Student Perceptions Of World Englishes (We) Pronunciations In Two Us Settings, Marie Arrieta

Dissertations and Theses

The present study investigated the perceptions and attitudes of two groups each of ESL teachers and students in the United States regarding World Englishes (WE) pronunciations before and after watching a video on WE accents. Data gathered via online surveys were analyzed using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. The results show that the perceptions of the teachers in the study ranged from somewhat negative to mildly positive, both pre- and post-video, which is consistent with Brown's (1993) findings that teachers' perceptions changed little if at all after being briefly exposed to WE stimuli. The education of the teachers …

The Acquisition Of A Stage Dialect, Nathaniel George Halloran

Dissertations and Theses

This study reports on the effectiveness of (theatrical) stage dialect learning techniques in bringing about linguistically authentic change. Actors use several techniques, some rather esoteric in nature and others more closely tied to linguistic fact such as the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet. The purpose of this study is to examine some of these techniques as to their ability to bring about linguistic authenticity, as well as to attempt a comparison of stage dialect acquisition and naturalistic dialect acquisition.

Data were collected by interviewing a convenience sample of twelve student actors. Six of these (three males, three females) were …