Standard English Research Paper

The relevance of Standard English use in society today is a well debated issue and careful research has been made within this topic for quite a while. This paper will, among others, refer to Jenkins work from 1998. Analysts are willing to imply that previous claim of the importance of preserving Standard English form, is no longer in alliance with what is happening in present society. The spread and practice of English varieties in the world is inevitable, and there is no reason questioning a possible change of the status of Standard English. Here, Timmis (2002) as well as Prodromou (2007) contribute with relevant research on this topic, based on material regarding academic purposes, focusing on teaching and learning English as a second language.

So far, none of the scholars have demonstrated any relevance of Standard English spread outside the range of its native-speakers. However, Timmis´ investigation showed that teachers’ opinion about the purpose of teaching English was that learners “long-term outcome of language learning should be as native-like competence” (2002) and not focused on achieving native-like accent. Even if the ‘sound like a native’ approach is less common among learners today, the aim of English education will for some people always remain being able to sound as native-like as possible. Jenkins on the other hand, gave the suggestion of introducing an international public pronunciation scheme (1998), to deviate from any form of Standard English use, but this in turn issued the notion of its application on non-/native users. There would be severe problematics with applying such language planning experiment, since such an occurrence rather happens during a more natural process. Finally, Prodromou discuss the relevance of Standard English within English education, for both native and non-native learners, and states “that neither the ‘native-speaker’ nor ‘nativeness’ (if such an essence exists) are appropriate norms for EIL” (Prodromou, 2007), but also implicate the importance of being introduced to the notion

It does not correlate with the contemporary use of English among the majority of its speakers, ELF included. They have separate attitudes towards its function in society and whether it is legitimate to reject Standard English form when it is not reaching its aim. The focus is mainly on its integration within education, whereas the question of whether standard form should be taught in school or if there is any equivalent schemes to adapt to. One solution mentioned were the effort to maintain some kind of equilibrium between non-native speakers’ varieties and Standard English. Then English education will serve the function of learning not only a language but a way of communicating with others, which is very central and is more or less required in our society