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    Teachers' Attitudes towards Asian Students' English Accented Speech
    While previous research studies examining the students’ attitudes towards certain English varieties/accents are great in number, none of these studies was focused on how teachers perceived students’ foreign accented speech. Thus, the present study aimed to investigate how native and non-native English speaking teachers comprehended students’ accented speeches. Twelve teacher participants and three Asian students at an international university in Thailand participated in the study. The recorded speeches of three Asian students whose first languages were Chinese (Mandarin), Korean, and Thai were used as stimuli. The teacher participants consisted of four native English speakers (three Americans and one Australian), four native Thai speakers, two native speakers of Burmese and two Indians. All teachers were asked to listen to the stimuli and later to provide answers in the questionnaires. Informal interviews were also given to some teacher participants to get clarification of their answers. The results of study demonstrated the teacher participants had different perceptions of the three foreign English accents. The teachers’ familiarity with a certain accent played an important role in their accent evaluation and recognition. The most familiar accent, Thai English, gained the highest level of positive evaluation and was considered the easiest one to understand. Although the three students’ English accented speeches carried some phonological features that were deviated from those of the so-called native English accents, these features did not prevent the teachers from understanding the students’ statements. The implications of these findings for teaching English pronunciation and communication were also discussed.
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    Corpus Stylistics & Business Ethics: “Do The Executives Really Mean What They Say?
    Nowadays, when everything ‘seems’ to be all about business; the word ‘business’ itself has inevitably connoted with unpleasant terms like ‘competition’ and ‘politics’. Together with that arise the issues of ‘trust’ and ‘ethics’. Can we believe what we see or hear? This paper looks into the style and analysis of business correspondence, particularly resignation letters. When a high-ranking executives leaves a company, the two standard phrases used as a face-saving measure for an executive or company in trouble are: “spending more time with family”; and “pursuing other interests” (Hefner, 2006). However, the recent resignation announcement of Google’s CFO, Patrick Pichette, has brought about a phenomenon in business world since it was regarded as “most unconventional leaving notice”. By using the real letters, authentic materials, which are designed for native speakers, will then become prominent in learning and teaching of writing skill, while at the same time integrate reading practice as well through the use of up-to-date happenings rather that textbooks conventionally.
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