English pronunciation in Swedish Upper Secondary School Students : A qualitative study of Swedish students’ pronunciation tendencies

Geographically, Sweden is significantly closer to England as opposed to America, two English speaking countries with two rather different varieties of the language. With regard to Britain’s history of colonization it could be assumed that British English (RP-variety) would be most frequently used globally. However, America’s power position in politics, economics, international businesses, and movie industries have contributed to making the American English (GA-variety) the more predominantly used variety of the two (Barber, 2000, p. 236). In the different varieties, the vowels /əu/ /ou/ /ju:/ /u:/ /ɑ:/ /æ/ /ɒ/ /ɑ/ /aɪ/ /i:/ and the consonants /ə/ /r/ /t/ /d/ show the most prominent difference in pronounciation (Navrátilová, 2013). Furthermore, Axelsson (2002, p.144) (in Alftberg, 2009, p. 4) claims that with regard to the previously mentioned factors, Swedish students come in contact with several different varieties of English on a daily basis, thus a one-accent-only approach seems outdated for learning purposes. In addition to this, the syllabus for teaching English in Sweden, LGY11 (SNAE, 2011) lays focus, not explicitly on pronunciation, but on intonation and fluency, two factors which are certainly affected by one’s pronunciation and prosody. The document also emphasizes the importance of incorporating different varieties of English from different English speaking cultures and countries into the lessons (SNAE, 2011).This raised the question of whether or not Swedish upper secondary school students tend to follow the global Americanization of pronunciation, if they still adhere to using RP due to its geographical proximity and former prestige, or if they mix different varieties. Therefore, a study was conducted on Swedish students’ pronunciation tendencies and attitudes towards different pronunciations. 58% of the students claimed to use GA and said that TV/YouTube is where they hear English the most. Only 17% claimed they used RP. However, the recordings of the students indicated that the majority used a mixture of the two, and only one student was completely consistent in their variety. Keywords: English pronunciation, Sweden, General American, Received Pronunciation, Teaching, Upper secondary schoo