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Misaki Kato is a PhD student in linguistics at the University of Oregon and a graduate fellow at CASLS. Her research primarily concerns non-native speech production and perception, including what factors affect phonetic characteristics of non-native speech, and how non-native speech is perceived by native and other non-native listeners.

Melissa Baese-Berk is an Associate Professor at the University of Oregon. She is also the Director of the Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) Certificate Program. In her research, Melissa focuses on phonology and phonetics, typically examining speech perception and production, with special attention to non-native speakers and listeners.

One of the main goals for second language (L2) learners is to carry out successful communication with native or other non-native speakers. While communicative language teaching approaches tend to de-emphasize pronunciation training (Derwing & Munro, 2009), pronunciation training can significantly contribute to L2 learners’ improvement of communication skills when done right. However, the reality is that there is little direction regarding where to start and how to implement pronunciation training effectively. The goal of this Topic of the Week article is to introduce some literature on how non-native speech is perceived and discuss how this research may be able to inform pronunciation instruction.

Perception of non-native speech is often discussed in terms of intelligibility, comprehensibility, and foreign-accentedness. Intelligibility is broadly defined as the extent to which a listener actually understands the speech (Munro & Derwing, 1999), and is often measured by having listeners write down or type exactly what they hear. Comprehensibility is defined as the listeners’ perception of how easy or difficult it is to understand the speech. Foreign-accentedness is how different a pattern of speech sounds compared to the local (or native) variety (Derwing & Munro, 2009). These are often measured using a Likert scale (e.g., for comprehensibility, listeners rate a speech sample on a scale from 1 “extremely easy to understand” to 9 “impossible to understand”). Comprehensibility has been shown to be relatively closely related to perception of accentedness (Derwing & Munro, 2009). However, intelligibility and accentedness are partially independent; more accented speech is not necessarily less intelligible speech (e.g., Munro & Derwing, 1999; Smiljanic & Bradlow, 2011). For example, Smiljanić and Bradlow (2011) demonstrated that proficient non-native English speakers were able to increase intelligibility of their speech when asked to speak more clearly even though the presence of a foreign accent remained the same. These findings suggest that, perhaps, intelligibility and comprehensibility of non-native speech can be improved at least somewhat independently of a foreign-accent.

To implement the idea that non-native speech can be understood despite a foreign-accent into practice, several studies have shown the effects of specific pronunciation instructions on increased intelligibility or comprehensibility. Derwing, Munro, and Wiebe (1998) demonstrated that non-native English speakers who were trained on prosodic features (e.g., speaking rate, intonation, rhythm, and word stress) showed larger improvement on comprehensibility ratings compared to the learners who were trained on individual consonants and vowels. Hahn (2004) also demonstrated the importance of teaching prosodic features, especially primary stress. In her study, non-native English speech with correctly placed primary stress resulted in better listener comprehension of the content. Further, listeners reported a more positive attitude toward the speaker. As shown in these studies, it is possible to improve intelligibility and comprehensibility of non-native speech by training learners on specific features of speech.

While the general comprehensibility of non-native speech could be improved by training non-native speakers and changing certain features of their speech, it is important to also keep in mind that speech communication takes two parties: a speaker and a listener. That is, perception of non-native speech may also depend on what kinds of experience, expectation, and attitude listeners bring in to the communication. For example, Rubin (1992) showed that the same English speech was perceived to be more or less accented depending on whether listeners saw a picture of an Asian or a Caucasian person as a speaker. Also, listeners’ attitude towards non-native speakers affects native listeners’ effort to understand non-native speech (Lindemann, 2002; Lippi-Green, 1994) and their perception of comprehensibility (Sheppard, Elliot & Baese-Berk, 2017). Further, the more practice listeners have trying to understand non-native speech, the better they can understand new speakers (Baese-Berk, Bradlow, & Wright, 2013; Bradlow & Bent, 2002). Therefore, perception of non-native speech is affected not only by properties of speakers’ speech but also by listeners’ attitudes and experiences. These findings have important implications for how non-native speakers are treated in social and professional settings, as speakers who are considered to have a foreign accent could experience stigmatization, harassment, or job discrimination (Gluszek & Dovidio, 2010; Munro, 2003), even though their speech may be quite intelligible. Also, given these findings, pronunciation training in the classroom may benefit from having listeners who are not familiar with the learners’ speech, such as student tutors, give evaluations to the learners’ speech. It is possible that such listeners’ evaluations are quite different from the instructor’s perception of his/her students’ speech, since the instructor has much more experience listening to a variety of non-native speech than student tutors. Also, their perception may be a more reliable indicator of how the learners’ speech is perceived in the communication settings outside the classroom.

Here, we have discussed that a variety of factors can contribute to perception of non-native speech. The above research findings have shown that both speaker- and listener-oriented factors matter in how intelligible, comprehensible, and accented non-native speech is perceived to be. More research, including classroom research, is needed to understand how successful communication can be achieved among native and non-native speakers.

References

Baese-Berk, M. M., Bradlow, A. R., & Wright, B. A. (2013). Accent-independent adaptation to foreign accented speech. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 133(3), EL174-EL180.

Deprez‐Sims, A. S., & Morris, S. B. (2010). Accents in the workplace: Their effects during a job interview. International Journal of Psychology, 45(6), 417-426.

Derwing, T. M., & Munro, M. J. (1997). Accent, intelligibility, and comprehensibility. Studies in second language acquisition, 19(1), 1-16.

Derwing, T. M., Munro, M. J., & Wiebe, G. (1998). Evidence in favor of a broad framework for pronunciation instruction. Language Learning, 48(3), 393-410.

Derwing, T. M., & Munro, M. J. (2009). Putting accent in its place: Rethinking obstacles to communication. Language Teaching, 42(4), 476-490.

Gluszek, A., & Dovidio, J. F. (2010). Speaking with a nonnative accent: Perceptions of bias, communication difficulties, and bellowing in the United States. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 29(2), 224-234.

Lindemann, S. (2002). Listening with an attitude: A model of native-speaker comprehension of non-native speakers in the United States. Language in Society, 31(3), 419-441.

Lippi-Green, R. (1994). Accent, standard language ideology, and discriminatory pretext in the courts. Language in Society, 23(2), 163-198.

Munro, M. J., & Derwing, T. M. (1999). Foreign accent, comprehensibility, and intelligibility in the speech of second language learners. Language Learning, 49(s1), 285-310.

Munro, M. J. (2003). A Primer on Accent Discrimination in the Canadian Context. TESL Canada Journal, 20(2), 38-51.

Rubin, D. L. (1992). Nonlanguage factors affecting undergraduates' judgments of nonnative English-speaking teaching assistants. Research in Higher Education, 33(4), 511-531.

Sheppard, B. E., Elliott, N. C., & Baese-Berk, M. M. (2017). Comprehensibility and intelligibility of international student speech: Comparing perceptions of university EAP instructors and content faculty. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 26, 42-51.

Smiljanić, R., & Bradlow, A. R. (2011). Bidirectional clear speech perception benefit for native and high-proficiency non-native talkers and listeners: Intelligibility and accentedness a. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 130(6), 4020-4031.