A Critique of Jennifer Jenkins’s “Implementin g an internationa l

approac h to Englis h pronunciation : The rol e of teache r

attitude s and identit y”

As stated in Jennifer Jenkins’s article entitled “Implementing an International

Approach to English Pronunciation: The role of Teacher Attitudes and Identity”
published in TESOL QUARTERLY, Vol. 39, No. 3 in September 2005, she carried
out a research into the role of nonnative speaker (NNS) teachers’ attitudes and
identity toward English accents so as to take a look at the feasibility of an English as
a lingua franca (ELF) approach. The only method used in this research is
interviewing. All the interviews which followed a pattern of twelve prompt questions
were recorded, and discussed under three major themes: Accent Attitudes, Effects of
Experiences and Teaching ELF Accents. Jenkins (2005) states that all eight NNES
teachers interviewed were ambivalent regarding their attitudes toward their own
English accent and their desire for native-like accent. The author goes on to say that
every interviewee could recount at least one bad experience in English that had
influenced the interviewee’s orientation of English accent. Additionally, she says
that most interviewees said they would be happy to teach their students ELF accents
whereas three of them showed some contradictions. The author concludes that the
feasibility of an ELF needs further research.

Despite the fact that Jenkins presents an important discussion of current

trends in the TESOL profession and that this article has a logical organisation, there
are a number of small, but important, weaknesses in this article.

Regarding to the method that Jenkins selected to collect data, the in-depth
interview was the only one of her choice. I do think that by conducting interviews
that lasted nearly an hour each she could gather lively and useful information of the
interviewee’s experiences as well as their knowledge of ELF. I also agree with her
when she explained that nearly 60 minutes was “the exact length being dictated by
the participant’s desire to speak” (Jenkins, 2005, p. 535). However, I find some
limitations in her method of collecting data. Firstly, only eight NNS teachers were
involved in the study, which is not persuasive in terms of quantitative. Secondly, the

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NNS teachers she interviewed were all females. It must have been more objective to
involve both males and females in the research. Additionally, the subjects of her
study comprised teachers from only Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Poland and Spain
whereas the feasibility of ELF is a worldwide issue. The findings may have been
different if more teachers from more different countries had been interviewed.

From the evidence and discussion in Accent Attitudes in Findings section,

Jenkins concludes that the attachment to the interviewees’ first language that is
considered as an extremely important part of who they are “leads in turn...to an
inherent ambivalence and hence to the contradictory statements” (Jenkins, 2005,
p.542). I find this conclusion rather implausible because of the way she collected the
data. As she stated in Method section, all of the participants in her study had a high
level of proficiency in English. Some of them had hardly heard of an ELF approach
and some were doing research on it. They might have thought that their answers to
the questions would reflect their proficiency. And because they were being recorded
during the interviews, I wonder if they answered her questions sincerely. The author
should have used questionnaires to collect more reliable and persuasive evidence,
which may affect her conclusion on their attitudes toward their own English accent
and their desire for NS accent.

As far as Effects of Experiences is concerned, Jenkins (2005) concludes that

past experiences is one of the factor that “may affect their attitudes to English at the
deeper level” and “may cause them to identify with NSs” (p. 541). In fact, the author
failed to see the effects of good experiences when she used question 9 in Interview
Prompts (p. 543) asking only about the teachers’ bad experiences to get the evidence.

In conclusion, this article is timely in terms of current trends in TESOL.

However, the author was not completely successful in making her point because she
did not use various methods of collecting data which resulted in certain inconvincible
evidence, discussions and conclusions. By interviewing eight NNS female teachers,
she did not have a definite conclusion on “the role of teacher attitudes and identity”
in “implementing an international approach to English Pronunciation” which,
according to her, needs further research.

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 REFERENCE

Jenkins , J. (2005). Implementin g an internationa l approac h to Englis h

pronunciation : Th e rol e of teache r attitude s and identit y. TESOL

Quarterly, 39, 535–543.