What Characterizes Comprehensible and Native‐like Pronunciation Among English‐as‐a‐Second‐Language Speakers? Meta‐Analyses of Phonological, Rater, and Instructional Factors

Abstract

The current study presents two meta‐analyses to explore what underlies the assessment and teaching of comprehensible and nativelike pronunciation among English‐as‐a‐Second‐Language speakers. In Study 1, listener studies (n = 37) were retrieved examining the influence of segmental, prosodic, and temporal features on listeners’ intuitive judgements of comprehensibility and nativelikeness/accentedness as per different listener backgrounds (expert, mixed, L2). In Study 2, training studies (n = 17) were retrieved examining the effects of segmental, prosodic, and temporal‐based instruction on ESL learners’ pronunciation. The results showed that (a) comprehensibility judgements were related to a range of segmental, prosodic, and temporal features; (b) accentedness judgements were strongly tied to participants’ correct pronunciation of consonants and vowels; and (c) instruction led to larger gains in comprehensibility than in nativelikeness. Moderator analyses demonstrated that expert listeners were more reliant on phonological information. Greater effects of instruction on comprehensibility than nativelikeness became clearer, especially when the treatment targeted prosodic accuracy. The findings suggest that ESL practitioners should prioritize suprasegemental practice to help students achieve comprehensible L2 pronunciation. The attainment of nativelike pronunciation, by contrast, may require an exclusive focus on the refinement of segmental accuracy, which is resistant to the influence of instruction.

Exploring Bangladeshi university students’ willingness to communicate (WTC) in English classes through a qualitative study

“…As their pronunciation is not up to the mark, they feel shy and embarrassed when they are in a situation to speak in English (Zhang, 2009). Native-like pronunciation skill helps learners comprehend the language of native speakers (Saito, 2021). 70% of the participants have noted that they speak in English in the classroom at the very beginning, but they stop practicing it while they see most of the students speak in their native tongue Bengali.…”

CAF indices and human ratings of oral performances in an opinion-based monologue task

“…However, faster speech cannot always guarantee a better understanding from the listeners' point of view. In this regard, perceived fluency (Segalowitz, 2010) or comprehensibility (Suzuki & Kormos, 2020;Saito, 2021), which emphasizes the listener's point of view, must be considered alongside the analytical measures.…”

“…Several studies have added human raters' holistic judgments to analytical CAF indices to evaluate L2 speakers' task-based performances (e.g., Revesz et al, 2016;Suzuki & Kormos, 2020). Holistic assessment in these studies often have slightly different emphases, such as the overall judgment of a speaker's degree of comprehensibility (Suzuki & Kormos, 2020;Saito, 2021), communicative adequacy (Revesz et al, 2016), overall communicative effectiveness (Sato, 2012), and communication ability (Sato & McNamara, 2019), or proficiency level (Yan et al, 2021), but the findings of previous studies show some features of human raters' impression of L2 speakers' oral performances.…”

“…It would follow that intuitive holistic judgments using raw scores can be meaningful depending on the research purpose, and utilizing the holistic judgment might have strong ecological validity, as it might reflect the impressionistic judgment made by the listener during real-life communication (Saito, 2021). However, it is still not clear that what kinds of constructs the holistic rating possesses.…”

“…However, it is still not clear that what kinds of constructs the holistic rating possesses. In addition, these intuitive ratings can also be affected by factors related to listeners (Saito, 2021). For example, even if two listeners assess the same speech, their ratings may differ.…”