Variation of English Pronunciation in the Context of European International Education

The thesis is devoted to the study of variations of English pronunciation is in the context of European international education. The main subject matter of the research is the oral English discourse in the field of international European education. The phonological characteristics that are used in lecture performances of non-native speakers in academic field referring to the English language as the means of instruction (EMI) are under the examination in this research paper. The purpose of this study is to determine general characteristics of pronunciation of EMI in educational European discourse. This research is traditionally structured: it consists of the introduction, the two chapters, the conclusion, the list of literature and the appendixes. The first chapter is theoretical and deals with the functioning of the English language in the field of academic area and touches upon such notions as globalization, language interference and variations of pronunciation. The second chapter is devoted to the research itself. It represents the description of practical experiments we have made to prove the hypothesis. In the first part of the chapter we have analyzed six recordings of an accented speech of lecturers from different countries (Spain, France, Russia) and have identified peculiarities of the EMI on the basis of this analysis. The second part of the research we have carried out aims to identify students’ perception of the speech of lectures who apply to the English language in order to instruct them. In particular, it describes the results of the questionnaire that we have compiled for both Russian and foreign students. The conclusion of the thesis gives the generalization of the study we conducted.