The purpose of this study is to compare and analyze the perceptions and attitudes of adult native speakers of Korean and Chinese toward the pronunciation of World Englishes. Fifty-two Korean and 63 Chinese speakers listened to six variations of World Englishes and then completed a questionnaire outlining their perceptions and attitudes toward the different pronunciations. The survey results revealed that Korean adult English learners showed less favorable attitudes toward different pronunciations of World Englishes than Chinese adult language learners did. Korean adult learners preferred American English, but Chinese adult learners preferred Canadian English. Among the three individual variables measured, the first language showed the greatest influence in their responses. The findings of this study imply that, in the context of English education in Korea, it is necessary to raise the awareness of both teachers and learners to the acceptability of World Englishes through exposure to a wide variety of English pronunciations.

Shim, Jae Hyung. 2017. “The Relationship between a Linguistic Landscape and a Floating Population: The Case of the Greater Anyang Region”. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 25(1). 85~117. The purpose of this paper is to look at a relationship between urban planning in Korean cities and linguistic landscapes. The study attempts to see the effect of urban development on the rate of English use in the public sphere, and how different sizes of a floating population affect such differences. In doing so, the Greater Anyang Region, located south of Seoul, was selected as the site for the current study. This area is comprised of three cities (Anyang, Gunpo, Uiwang) with a number of business districts including the old downtown and new centers of each city, creating a clear difference in landscape between each area. The study observed the linguistic landscape around subway stations in this region. By observing the rate of English use on commercial signs in these commercial districts, it was found that there is a parallel line between the size of a floating population and the percentage of English in the public sphere. In addition, different rates of English use in different areas reflect a decline of old downtowns, while showing the higher economic status of newer commercial districts. Such phenomena provide an instance of a close relationship between the use of English and a floating population, since the busier business districts appear to have more use of English.

Shim, Youngsook. 2014. World Englishes research in Korea, China, and Japan: A meta-analysis of articles published in World Englishes and English Today. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 22(3). The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of research findings on world Englishes in the context of Korean, Chinese, and Japanese societies, based on an analysis of 89 research articles published in two international journals, World Englishes and English Today, between 2005 and 2014. After a careful review of them, the articles were classified into four important topic areas: the local variety, including language users’ attitudes toward it and its linguistic characteristics (36%); other varieties of world Englishes, with subcategories of perception, education, and intelligibility of those varieties (17%); English use in the given social context, further categorized into descriptive analysis and critical analysis of English use (25%); English teaching and learning, including general EFL teaching/learning topics and English- medium instruction (18%); and others (4%). This paper presents important findings surrounding each topic area and further discusses their sociolinguistic implications and suggests future research direction.

This paper discusses the results of two questionnaire surveys which are designed to find out how Korean college students perceive some problematic English sentences and how their imperfect knowledge of English grammar affects their attitudes towards speaking English. The major purposes of the paper are: first, to analyze what erroneous sentences they find either correct or incorrect; second, to find out how much they can be lenient with problematic Eng lish sentences by analyzing what sentences they think are fine to understand and would use; third, to investigate how their lack of proper knowledge of English grammar affects their attitudes in using and learning English; and fourth, to discuss importance of grammar teaching in an EFL classroom. In line with recent studies on World Englishes, this research adheres to the idea that it is significant to give students opportunities to use the language without fear of making grammatical mistakes rather than emphasizing Standard English and the correct language. However, the results of the surveys show that the lower the level of their English proficiency, the more they want to speak grammatically correct English, and the lesser they show leniency towards deviant English structures.

This study aims to identify differences of teachers" attitudes toward World Englishes (WE) for language teaching and language testing, and to investigate their perceptions of various rating criteria for the L2 oral proficiency test. Data were collected through questionnaires from 72 English teachers in the UK, Malaysia, and Japan. The analysis revealed that there are significant differences in their attitudes toward WE among the groups of English teachers depending on their teaching contexts. With regard to the perceptions on rating criteria, it was found that different groups of English teachers considered various rating criteria for the L2 oral proficiency test differently. The English teachers showing negative attitudes toward WE perceive grammar, pronunciation, native-likeness as more important rating criteria than the others such as vocabulary, organization, task fulfillment, and appropriateness for the assessment of non-native speakers" English language oral proficiency compared to the other group of English teachers showing positive attitudes toward WE.