ELF ‘Awareness’: Student Attitudes Towards Accents in a Context of English as an International Language

The term 'ELF aware' (Sifakis 2019) has gained currency in recent years to refer to teaching and learning contexts in which the ability to communicate in an international environment, between non native speakers, is recognised as a desired outcome of the course. In this chapter we present the results of a survey administered to incoming undergraduate students of languages at the University of Venice Ca' Foscari to determine their attitudes towards non native accents when English is used in an international context. We go on to compare the results with a similar study administered to students in two MA courses, in English language and literature, and in International Relations, to determine whether MA students are more 'ELF aware' than undergraduates, and whether students of International Relations have a more pragmatic, instrumentally motivated approach to ELF than their peers who are specialising in English language and literature.