Second language speakers’ awareness of their own comprehensibility

Abstract

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.

Metacognition in second language speech perception and production

“…Similarly, Dlaska and Krekeler (2008) reported a moderate alignment between L2 experienced speakers' self-assessments and the raters' assessments of accuracy; however L2 speakers had di culties in recognising a considerable number of productions being mispronounced, indicating that metacognitive monitoring of L2 speech production might yet be relatively modest, even in experienced L2 speakers. Noteworthy, when assessing broader linguistic levels (self-assessment of sentence production, discourse), L2 speakers mostly misjudge their production accuracy (Tro movich et al, 2016) and might not be aware of their overall comprehensibility (Strachan et al, 2019), suggesting that multi-level monitoring, involving micro (e.g., sounds) and macro-linguistic structures, is a complex cognitive skill that can be beyond the reach of even experienced L2 speakers. In sum, the current ndings suggest that L2 novice learners have an accurate 'overall/gross' estimation of their L2 phonetic skills: they accurately self-monitor "gross" outcomes in their L2 speech perception and production, yet the metacognitive system seems to not monitor the precision of L2 production precision, in a ne-grained continuous fashion, which is likely related to unstable or imprecise representations for novel non-native speech sounds.…”

Unintelligible Speech: Listeners' Awareness to Indonesian-Accented Speech With Pronunciation Errors

“…In sociolinguistics variables, such as accent, Drager and Kirtley (2016: 11) is believed that listeners' awareness affect speech perception. Furthermore, studies on speakers' awareness show that self-assessment as a tool to speakers' awareness has influenced comprehensibility (Strachan et al, 2019). However, studies on listeners' awareness of speech related to the intelligibility that brings about pronunciation errors are hardly found.…”

“…Another study examining speakers' awareness of their comprehensibility yields that speakers' awareness through a self-assessment of their speaking has affected their comprehensibility (Strachan et al, 2019). Nonetheless, a question raises whether listeners are aware of speakers' pronunciation errors that can contribute to their intelligibility.…”

An Exploration of the Relationships Among Task Repetition, Formulaic Language, and Perceived Fluency in Chinese L1 EAP Students' Oral Presentations

“…However, comprehensibility of their participants only changed slightly after self-assessment which could have been due to the lack of an evaluation rubric (Strachan et al, 2019). According to Casteñeda and Rodriguez-González (2011), adding an evaluation rubric to task which may or may not involve repetition, can boost effectiveness of self-reflection.…”

“…The reason why task repetition affected the oral performance of the six students out of ten is probably because they responded to other factors which could have also contributed to the improvement in their oral performance. As mentioned before, among them could be learners' reflection on their first attempt (Chen, 2008;Strachan et al, 2019). For example, self-assessment could have helped some students not only with their fluency development, but also could have brought linguistic self-awareness (Young & West, 2018) and possibly, stimulated lexical richness and complexity leading to some development in formulaic language.…”