World Englishes: Attitudes of Male and Female University Students

This quantitative study investigated the attitudes of male and female university students in Türkiye toward World Englishes (WE). It aimed to measure participants’ overall perceptions of WE and determine if there is a statistically significant difference between the perceptions of male and female students toward WE. In total, 50 females and 28 males from the Department of Translation and Interpreting participated in the study by filling out a 20-item Likert scale questionnaire adapted from Choi (2007). The questionnaire data were analyzed by SPSS 23 using inferential statistics and the Mann-Whitney-U test to compare the mean scores of male and female participants. The results showed that although there was no statistically significant difference between the general mean scores of two groups, there was a gender-based statistically significant difference between the mean scores of two groups regarding some specific items, which highlighted the fact that participants preferred intelligibility over native-likeness in their speech, and males’ showed greater acceptance of native varieties while females tended to embrace local varieties more positively. Also, it was found that the participants showed a more favorable attitude towards Turkish-mother-tongue language teachers as they felt culturally closer to these teachers, and Turkish-mother-tongue teachers were able to use students’ mother tongue to foster learning. These findings suggested that the role of the mother tongue should not be underscored and there should be a gender-sensitive approach to integrating the concept of WE in classroom practices.