Standard English Ideology and Korean Students’ Perceptions of English Varieties

As an initial step toward advocating change in English education, this study investigates the attitudes of 30 Korean college students toward four varieties of English: Standard American English (SAE), Australian English, South African English, and Nigerian English. A speaker evaluation test using a verbal guise format, along with three attitude-related questions, was employed to collect data. Key findings include: 1) students evaluated the SAE speaker most favorably; 2) the provision of nationality information further enhanced the positive evaluation of the SAE speaker; and 3) most students stated that SAE should be the variety taught and learned in Korea. These findings suggest that students have internalized the ideology of SAE through prolonged exposure to an educational environment in which SAE has been implicitly privileged. The study argues that this dominant ideology undermines the national curriculum’s goal of fostering intercultural communicative competence among students. It recommends integrating the World Englishes paradigm into the national curriculum, textbook development, teacher education, and classroom instruction, with an emphasis on linguistic diversity and inclusivity.