“Learner profiles and attitudes towards accent in the foreign language: the role of language backgrounds in the interpretation of data from the survey”,

This paper is part of collaborative research investigating the attitudes of first-year university students in Italy towards foreign accents. It examines the first part of the survey which aims to define the students’ identity and language profile. The analysis focuses on the characteristics of the group which are hypothesised to correlate with stu- dents' attitudes towards foreign accents examined in the other sections of the question- naire. Factors that could have an impact are gender, motivation for studying languages, bi-/plurilingualism, the nature of the languages studied, the language repertoire and the background of its acquisition.