Co-text, context, and listening proficiency as crucial variables in intelligibility among nonnative users of English

Abstract

Research on intelligibility in international encounters has long focused on issues of pronunciation to the detriment of factors such as linguistic co-text and extralinguistic context, which are comparatively well-studied variables in intelligibility research concerning L1 listeners. This paper seeks to expand the scope of international intelligibility research in this respect by reporting on a large-scale study involving 423 nonnative listeners at different proficiency levels, who transcribed words spoken with another nonnative accent under four conditions that varied in the availability of syntactic, semantic, and schematic cues. The results suggest that co-text and context as well as listening proficiency are crucial variables that ought to receive greater attention in research on international intelligibility. The pedagogical implications of these findings are addressed as well.

Individual differences in L2 listening proficiency revisited: Roles of form, meaning, and use aspects of phonological vocabulary knowledge

“…Second, many scholars are increasingly conceptualizing L2 listening proficiency as the ability to understand not only L1 speakers but also L2 speakers. Future research could further explore L2 phonological knowledge by employing both L1 and L2 listeners' voices (Thir, 2023). Third, although we took a first step toward using the LJT as a measure of automatized phonological vocabulary knowledge (Uchihara et al, 2023), the construct validity of the task needs to be further studied by examining its relation to other measures of implicit lexical knowledge (Elgort & Warren, 2014, for form and semantic priming in lexical decision tasks; for a synthesis, Suzuki & Elgort, 2023) and aptitude for proceduralization and automatization (Suzuki & DeKeyser, 2017, for procedural memory).…”