Should We Use American English to Improve Students' Listening Skills?
This study aims to find out whether or not speakers‟ accents used in educational materials make any difference in the improvement of Turkish elementary EFL learners‟ listening skills. With this aim in mind, 40 students from two classes at Selcuk University were divided into two groups as American English group (n=20) and British English group (n=20). The students in both groups were given the listening parts of the London Test of English (Level 2) both in General American (GA) Accent and in the Received Pronunciation (RP) accent as pretests. Following that, the students in American English (AE) group studied the American version of Longman English Interactive Online for 20 hours, and the students in British English (BE) group studied the British version of Longman English Interactive Online for 20 hours. After this on-line instruction period, the students in both groups were given the listening part of the London Test of English in GA and RP accents. The results revealed statistically significant differences in favor of General American accent.