THE PRESENCE OF THE BRITISH AND AMERICAN ENGLISH VARIETY AMONG THE FIRST- YEAR STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ZENICA

<p>Due to a large number of World Englishes spread around the world, the impact of the<br />&lsquo;core&rsquo;, long considered norm-providing, English varieties is being slowly reduced. Still, the<br />influence of the two varieties, namely Standardised British English and Standardised American<br />English, seems to be spread across the world and throughout all the varieties, in particular the<br />peripheral or, in Kachruvian terms, outer-circle varieties. However, since these two varieties<br />differ in their demographic weight and the institutional support they get, they are not equally<br />represented, with American English being greatly present through the mass media and British<br />English being dominant in foreign language teaching. The simultaneous exposure to both<br />varieties is expected to lead to the inconsistent use of the varieties in different language aspects<br />by foreign language learners, Bosnian learners of English in particular. The current paper<br />reports on the project completed by the authors with the aim of investigating whether the firstyear students at the University of Zenica tend to use both varieties intermittently through<br />different aspects, namely pronunciation, spelling, grammar and vocabulary choice or whether<br />they consistently use only one of the varieties in different language aspects, for which the results<br />obtained by descriptive and inferential statistical analysis will be employed. Furthermore, the<br />research will provide an insight into the students&rsquo; attitudes regarding the use of the<br />aforementioned varieties. The main goal of the paper is to raise awareness of English language<br />teachers and students in Bosnia and Herzegovina and to prompt them to start thinking about the<br />language they use.</p>