Resumen de Non-native listeners perceiving foreign accentedness of English speech: new evidence from Chinese and Spanish listeners

Xiaojiao Xue, Yixue Shan, Xinyu Wang, Richard Erick Dunham

• English

  As an international language, English is an important tool for people of different native languages to communicate with each other. Many empirical studies, proving that foreign accents are prevalent in L2 learners’ oral English, involved native speakers as raters of foreign accents. This study compared the rating patterns of listeners from Chinese, Spanish and English language backgrounds with different English proficiencies for foreign accents in English speech and investigated the acoustical cues used by these listeners. Results showed that Chinese listeners, sharing language backgrounds with talkers, tended to be more tolerant for the Chinese accent in English speech. Spanish listeners had a stricter criterion for mild Chinese accents, proving that the influence of listeners’ L1 on their perception of foreign accents can be different for different degrees of accents. The effects of listeners’ L2 proficiency was found for Chinese listeners’ perception of accents and the number of acoustic predictors used by non-native English listeners. The study provides more evidence about the mechanism of native and non-native listeners’ perception of foreign accent and offers implications for the recruitment of raters for the assessment of oral English.

• 中文

  英语作为一门国际语言，是不同母语的人们相互交流的重要工具。许多实证研究证明，外语口音在二语 学习者的英语口语中普遍存在。本研究比较了来自汉语、西班牙语和英语背景的不同英语水平的听者对英语外 国口音的评价模式，并考察了这些听者所使用的声学线索。结果表明，与说话者有共同语言背景的汉语背景听 者对英语语音中的中国口音更为宽容。西班牙语听者对中国口音持更为严格的标准。研究还发现，听者的二语 水平会影响听者对外国口音的感知以及使用声学线索的数量。本研究揭示了母语和非母语听者对外国口音的感 知机制，并为英语口语测试中评分员的采用提供了启示。