Chinese University Students’ Perceptions of the Impact of a “Standard” English Accent on Classroom Participation in TESOL Classrooms

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-597-3_16How to use a DOI?

Keywords

TESOL; Standard English accent; Intelligibility; Classroom participation; Motivation

Abstract

This study uses a questionnaire-based methodology to investigates the effects of Chinese university students’ view of a “standard” English accent on their classroom involvement and future professional growth. The research finds that learners’ perceptions of Standard British English (SBE) and General American English (GenAm) are still influenced by the idea of standard language, and it examines the interaction between this ideology and emerging respects such as intelligibility and belonging in English. The results show that accent-related concerns may hinder classroom participation, as 72.73% of the participants reported that they sometimes, often, or always hesitate to speak in class because of their accent. This article further argues that TESOL teaching classrooms should move away from the mother-tongue-centered teaching model and place comprehensibility, identity, and diversity in pronunciation teaching at the core.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Shidi Zhang
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/07/13
TI  - Chinese University Students’ Perceptions of the Impact of a “Standard” English Accent on Classroom Participation in TESOL Classrooms
BT  - Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Language and Cultural Communication (ICLCC 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 130
EP  - 138
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-597-3_16
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-597-3_16
ID  - Zhang2026
ER  -