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In high-stakes oral proficiency testing as well as in everyday encounters, accent is the most salient aspect of nonnative speech. Prior studies of English language learners' (ELLs') pronunciation have focused on single parameters of English, such as vowel duration, fundamental frequency as related to intonation, or temporal measures of speech production. The present study addresses a constellation of suprasegmental characteristics of nonnative speakers of accented English, combining indices of speech rate, pause, and intonation. It examines relations between those acoustic measures of accentedness and listeners' impressions of second-language oral proficiency. Twenty-six speech samples elicited from iBT TOEFL ® examinees were analyzed using a KayPENTAX Computerized Speech Laboratory. Monolingual U.S. undergraduates (n = 188) judged the speakers' oral proficiency and comprehensibility. A multiple regression analysis revealed the individual and joint predictiveness of each of the suprasegmental measures. The innovative aspect of this study lies in the fact that the multiple features of accentedness were measured via instrumentation rather than being rated by judges who may, themselves, be subject to rating biases. The suprasegmental measures collectively accounted for 50% of the variance in oral proficiency and comprehensibility ratings, even without taking into consideration other aspects of oral performance or of rater predilections.THE CONSTRUCTS OF COMPREHENSIBILITY and accentedness relate in complex ways to native speaker (NS) judgments of English language learners' (ELLs') oral proficiency. No clear isomorphism has been established between degree of accentedness and comprehensibility. Speakers who succeed in reducing the degree of "foreignness" in their accents (based on expert observer judgments) may still be heard as incomprehensible by lay listeners (Munro & Derwing, 1995).

The linguistic stereotyping hypothesis holds that even brief samples of speech varieties associated with low-prestige groups can cue negative attributions regarding individual speakers. The converse phenomenon is reverse linguistic stereotyping (RLS). In RLS, attributions of a speaker's group membership trigger distorted evaluations of that person's speech. The present study established a procedure for ascertaining a proclivity to RLS for individual listeners. In addition to RLS, variables reflecting degree of multicultural involvement (e.g., proportion of friends who are nonnative speakers, amount of language study) predicted speech evaluations. Although the RLS measurement procedure outlined here requires more demanding administration than mere paper-and-pencil self-reports, it has the advantage of reflecting authentic RLS processes. Measuring individuals' RLS levels can help screen teachers, job interviewers, immigration officials, and others who are called on to make judgments about the oral proficiency of speakers of nonprestige language varieties.

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