Few studies on evaluations of non-native English (NNE) accents by non-native listeners have taken into account degrees of accentedness. This study investigated the perception of moderately and slightly accented English by NNE in an educational context. Eight male speakers recorded two fragments of a lecture in English or Dutch. Experts determined the degree of accentedness of the speakers (moderate, slight, native). In an online questionnaire, 163 Dutch students evaluated the fragments. The moderately accented instructors were evaluated as less comprehensible than slightly accented and native instructors. The Dutch and English fragments were considered equally comprehensible. The moderately accented instructors were regarded less positively than the slightly accented and native English instructors. Slightly accented instructors were evaluated as more likeable than the native English instructors and the instructors in the native Dutch fragments. In conclusion, degrees of accentedness in English influence NNE listeners' attitudinal evaluations.

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In a verbal guise experiment, 178 listeners with three nationalities (58 French, 59 German and 61 Spanish) listened to samples recorded by female speakers with three degrees of accentedness (strong/slight accented-Dutch and native) in English, French, German and Spanish. Findings indicate that a strong accent had a detrimental effect on understanding and attitudinal evaluations, while a slight accent hardly led to negative effects. A speaker with a strong Dutch accent in English was evaluated as less competent than speakers with a slight or native accent. Speakers with a strong Dutch accent in French, German or Spanish were evaluated as less friendly and less competent than speakers with a native accent.Keywords: foreign accent, ELF, attitudes, accent strength, comprehensibility En un experimento que midió el efecto de la acentuación utilizando la técnica de verbal guise, 178 participantes de tres nacionalidades (58 franceses, 59 alemanes y 61 españoles) escucharon unas muestras grabadas de hablantes femeninos con tres grados de acentuación (con acento holandés muy marcado, ligeramente marcado, y con un acento nativo) en inglés, francés, alemán y español. Los resultados indicaron que un acento muy marcado tenía un efecto negativo en la comprensión y evaluación de actitudes, mientras que un acento ligeramente marcado casi no tuvo efectos negativos. Un hablante con un acento holandés muy marcado en inglés fue evaluado como menos competente que los hablantes nativos o los hablantes con un acento ligeramente marcado. Los hablantes que hablaban con un acento holandés muy marcado tanto en francés, alemán como español fueron considerados como menos amables y menos competentes que los hablantes con un acento nativo.

An area of intercultural pragmatics (ILP) that has been investigated extensively is the ability of learners to understand and use indirect and polite language in performing speech acts. ILP studies that have investigated learners' ability to modify speech acts have shown that learners tend to use fewer and less varied modifiers than native speakers (Faerch and Kasper 1989;Hendriks 2002). To date, however, few studies have investigated the e¤ect of non-native modification of speech acts. Evidence from research on the comprehensibility of EFL language has indicated that grammatical errors and / or non-native pronunciation can obstruct comprehension (Lindemann 2003) and that non-native speakers may be evaluated negatively with regard to their personality (Bresnahan et al. 2002; Nejjari et al. forthcoming).This study investigated the e¤ect of the (under) use of syntactic and lexical modifiers in English e-mail requests written by Dutch learners. In an online web-survey, native speakers of English were asked to evaluate the comprehensibility of the e-mail requests and personality dimensions of the sender of the e-mail. Findings indicate that underuse of request modification in e-mails had a negative e¤ect on participants' evaluation of the personality of the sender of the e-mail.

Fruit for back translating the material and questionnaires. We also would like to thank Marieke de Mooij, Catherine Nickerson, two anonymous reviewers, the associate editor and the editor for their comments on an earlier version of our paper.