Presentation

Evaluating Individual Variability in Foreign Accent Comprehension

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Abstract

How much do people vary in their ability to understand foreign-accented speech? Answering this question may lead to useful insights into communication processes among interlocutors from diverse linguistic backgrounds. Although some speakers are often described as being easier to understand than others, listener factors also play a role in whether a particular accented utterance is understood. Such influences include prior experience with the speaker’s accent and sharing the same first language as the speaker. Age may also be important, in that young children may have less robust perceptual representations that compromise processing of unfamiliar speech patterns. This paper describes the development of a pilot tool for assessing listeners’ comprehension abilities. Six groups of listeners differing in age and L1 background completed a true-false judgment task in which they responded to sentence-length items produced in English by Cantonese speakers. The resulting comprehension scores indicate effects of listener age (teens performed better than younger children) and listener proficiency; however, they also indicate shared comprehension across listeners, even among those from diverse L1 backgrounds.

How to Cite:

Munro, M. J., Derwing, T. M. & Holtby, A. K., (2011) “Evaluating Individual Variability in Foreign Accent Comprehension”, Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Proceedings 3(1).