This study investigated how listener experience (extent of previous exposure to non-native speech) and semantic context (degree and type of semantic information available) influence measures of intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness of non-native (L2) speech. Participants were 24 native English-speaking listeners, half experienced and half inexperienced with L2 speech, who transcribed and rated 90 English utterances spoken by six English and six Mandarin speakers. The utterances varied along two dimensions: real-world expectations (true vs. false utterances) and semantic meaningfulness (meaningful vs. meaningless utterances). Listeners with more experience understood more speech from the L1 and L2 speakers than listeners with less experience but did not rate it differently in comprehensibility and accentedness. All listeners understood and rated the utterances from L2 speakers based on the semantic context available: true–false utterances were understood and rated best, meaningless utterances least. These findings have implications for evaluating learner pronunciation and for training learners in successful L2 communication strategies.
Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1366728914000832How to cite this article: PAVEL TROFIMOVICH, TALIA ISAACS, SARA KENNEDY, KAZUYA SAITO and DUSTIN CROWTHER (2016 People are famously poor at judging their own ability, engaging in such behaviours as "errors of omission", "flawed self-assessment", and "faulty self-awareness"
This study investigated whether second language (L2) speakers are aware of and can manipulate aspects of their speech contributing to comprehensibility. Forty Mandarin speakers of L2 English performed two versions of the same oral task. Before the second task, half of the speakers were asked to make their speech as easy for the interlocutor to understand as possible, while the other half received no additional prompt. Speakers self-assessed comprehensibility after each task and were interviewed about how they improved their comprehensibility. Native-speaking listeners evaluated speaker performances for five dimensions, rating speech similarly across groups and tasks. Overall, participants did not become more comprehensible from task 1 to task 2, whether prompted or not, nor did speakers’ self-assessments become more in line with raters’, indicating speakers may not be aware of their own comprehensibility. However, speakers who did demonstrate greater improvement in comprehensibility received higher ratings of flow, and speakers’ self-ratings of comprehensibility were aligned with listeners’ assessments only in the second task. When discussing comprehensibility, speakers commented more on task content than linguistic dimensions. Results highlight the roles of task repetition and self-assessment in speakers’ awareness of comprehensibility.
AbstractThis study examined longitudinal changes in second language (L2) interlocutors’ mutual comprehensibility ratings
(perceived ease of understanding speech), targeting comprehensibility as a dynamic, time-varying, interaction-centered construct.
In a repeated-measures, within-participants design, 20 pairs of L2 English university students from different language backgrounds
engaged in three collaborative and interactive tasks over 17 minutes, rating their partner’s comprehensibility at 2–3 minute
intervals using 100-millimeter scales (seven ratings per interlocutor). Mutual comprehensibility ratings followed a U-shaped
function over time, with comprehensibility (initially perceived to be high) being affected by task complexity but then reaching
high levels by the end of the interaction. The interlocutors’ ratings also became more similar to each other early on and remained
aligned throughout the interaction. These findings demonstrate the dynamic nature of comprehensibility between L2 interlocutors
and suggest the need for L2 comprehensibility research to account for the effects of interaction, task, and time on
comprehensibility measurements.
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