English or Englishes? Outer and Expanding Circle Teachers’ Awareness of and Attitudes towards their Own Variants of English in ESL/EFL Teaching Contexts

Oct 15, 2026

The article examines how English teachers from India and Iran—representing Kachru’s Outer and Expanding Circles—perceive and evaluate their own English accents in ESL/EFL teaching. Drawing on a questionnaire administered to 260 teachers, it assesses cognitive, affective, and behavioral attitudes. Findings indicate Expanding Circle teachers show an exonormative orientation, preferring native-speaker and mostly American English pronunciation, while Indian teachers favor endonormativity and value local forms of English, including support for British English. The paper emphasizes raising awareness of teachers and learners toward the global spread of English.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryExam

FormatPDF

Pages21

Reading Time53 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

World Englishes and English as an international language

Pronunciation norms and pedagogical models (ELF and nativised)

Prior research on teachers’ attitudes to English accents

Study focus and attitude components

Australian Journal of Teacher Education | Volume 43 | Issue 2 | Article 4 | | --- | --- | 2018 English or Englishes? Outer and Expanding Circle Teachers’ Awareness of and Attitudes towards their Own Variants of English in ESL/EFL Teaching Contexts Abbas Monfared Allameh Tabataba'i University, [abbasmonfared85@gmail.com](abbasmonfared85@gmail.com) Mohammad Khatib Allameh Tabataba'i University, [mkhatib27@yahoo.com](mkhatib27@yahoo.com) Recommended Citation Monfared, A., & Khatib, M. (2018). English or Englishes? Outer and Expanding Circle Teachers’ Awareness of and Attitudes towards their Own Variants of English in ESL/EFL Teaching Contexts. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 43 (2). [http://dx.doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2018v43n2.4](http://dx.doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2018v43n2.4) This Journal Article is posted at Research Online. [http://ro.ecu.edu.au/ajte/vol43/iss2/4](http://ro.ecu.edu.au/ajte/vol43/iss2/4) Australian Journal of Teacher Education English or Englishes? Outer and Expanding Circle Teachers’ Awareness of and Attitudes towards their Own Variants of English in ESL/EFL Teaching Contexts Abbas Monfared, Allameh Tabataba’ Mohammad Khatib Allameh Tabataba’i University, Iran Abstract: One of the challenging issues that has gained much attention, and has infact sparked much debate, within the emergence and acquisition of World Englishes, is the Native-Non-native accent, especially its relationship with teachers’ and learners’ identity and selection of an appropriate pedagogic model. This paper investigates the attitudes of 260 English teachers from India and Iran as members of Outer and Expanding Circles, respectively. Using a questionnaire, this study measures cognitive, affective and behavioral attitudes of teachers towards their own English accents in two circles which include the most users of English in the globalized world. The results show that teachers in the Expanding Circle (Kachru, 1992), compared to those in the Outer Circle, had an exonormative orientation, favoring native-speaker and mostly American English pronunciation. Indian teachers were in favor of endonormativity, highly valued their local forms of English while they were in favor of British English. Teachers’preferences will be discussed with consideration of the historical and political backgrounds of the two countries which might have influenced the construction of teachers’ identity. The results of this study suggest that, together with encouraging and valuing different varieties of English, it is important to acknowledge and promote ways to raise awareness of teachers and learners towards global spread of English. Introduction With the rapid growth of English as an international language (EIL) much interest has been stated in the status of native speaker (NS) norm, especially in the realm of English Language Teaching (ELT) which has created serious challenges to the traditional conceptualization of English language teaching. The global spread of English can have many different political, historical, economic and scientific reasons but one distinguished implication ofit is the emergence of multiple varieties of English which has given new names to English such as ‘International English’(e.g., McKay, 2012), ‘English as a lingua franca’(ELF), often used interchangeably with EIL (e.g., Jenkins, 2000; Seidlhofer, 2011) and ‘World Englishes’(WE) (e.g., Jenkins, 2003; Kachru & Nelson, 2006; Kirkpatrick, 2007, 2011) . Kachru’s Vol 43, 2, February 2018 56 Australian Journal of Teacher Education description (1989) of the use of English in the world and a recent estimate that the number of English language users are close to 2 billion users in the world (Schneider, 2011) imply the fact that varieties of English and new educational methodologies will be predictable in the near future. In this regard, ELT should mainly concentrate on the global aspect of English in ord

FAQs

What main issue does the paper address?

It addresses debates around World Englishes, specifically how native–non-native accents relate to teachers’ and learners’ identity and the choice of an appropriate ELT pedagogic model.

How was the study conducted and what was measured?

The study used a questionnaire with 260 English teachers from India and Iran, measuring cognitive, affective, and behavioral attitudes toward their own English accents.

What differences emerged between Outer and Expanding Circle teachers?

Expanding Circle teachers showed an exonormative orientation, favoring native-speaker and mostly American English pronunciation, while Indian teachers favored endonormativity and valued local forms of English, while also preferring British English.

Oct 15, 2026

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