Presentation

Accentedness and Acceptability Ratings of Japanese English Teachers’ Pronunciation

---

Abstract

Non-native English teachers in the EFL setting wish to serve as models for their students; however, for both teachers and students, it is not clear what “acceptable pronunciation” of English teachers is. To this end, an experiment was conducted to investigate the acceptability of non-native English teachers’ pronunciation in relation to accentedness. Ten native English-speaking teachers, ten Japanese teachers, and ten Japanese students listened to an English passage read aloud by 20 Japanese speakers. The listeners rated each speaker’s pronunciation in terms of “accentedness” and “acceptability as an English teacher” on a nine-point scale. A strong positive correlation was found between “accentedness” and “acceptability” within each listener group, suggesting the possibility that accentedness plays a role in judging the acceptability of non-native English teachers’ pronunciation. Native English-speaking teachers tended to give higher acceptability ratings than Japanese teachers and students. There were differences among speakers for both accentedness and acceptability, although the rank order revealed a similarity for lower-ranked speakers among all three listener groups. To fully assess acceptability, other constructs such as intelligibility and comprehensibility, as well as phonetic features such as fluency, clarity, and speech rate, should be taken into account.

How to Cite:

Sugimoto, J. & Uchida, Y., (2017) “Accentedness and Acceptability Ratings of Japanese English Teachers’ Pronunciation”, Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Proceedings 9(1).