Perceived foreign accent and comprehensibility in the oral production of adolescent learners of English : study abroad vs. at home learning contexts
The aim of the present research study is to examine the contrasting effects of two learning contexts, study abroad (SA) vs. at home (AH), on the language development of Spanish adolescent learners of English. It focuses on the dimensions of foreign accent (FA) and comprehensibility in the target lan...
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| Format: | doctoral thesis |
| Status: | Published version |
| Publication Date: | 2013 |
| Country: | España |
| Institution: | CBUC, CESCA |
| Repository: | TDR. Tesis Doctorales en Red |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:www.tdx.cat:10803/129732 |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10803/129732 |
| Access Level: | Open access |
| Keyword: | Pronunciació per estrangers Anglès Estudiants estrangers Anglès parlat Ensenyament 81 |
| Summary: | The aim of the present research study is to examine the contrasting effects of two learning contexts, study abroad (SA) vs. at home (AH), on the language development of Spanish adolescent learners of English. It focuses on the dimensions of foreign accent (FA) and comprehensibility in the target language. First, we explore learners’ linguistic progress in these speech dimensions by assessing the impact of a 3-month SA programme on the extemporaneous speech of a group of 25 learners, and compare their results with those obtained by a control group of 31 learners receiving classroom instruction at home. For that purpose, speech samples were collected for each group longitudinally at two different points in time, before (Pre-test) and after (Post-test) the SA and the formal instruction (FI) context, respectively. A group of non-native listeners (n=12) were asked firstly to assign ratings to the samples by means of Likert scales, and then they were asked to report on the aspects that had affected their ratings most for each of the two speech dimensions analysed. Secondly, on the basis of this data, we explore the relationship between FA and comprehensibility by analysing the correlations between FA and comprehensibility scores at Pre-test and Post-test for the SA and AH participants and the information reported from the group of listeners. Results indicate that SA participants obtained significantly greater gains in FA than the AH group. The findings also suggest that the SA context was more beneficial than the AH context in terms of comprehensibility development, since the percentage of learners improving their comprehensibility scores during SA was significantly larger than the percentage of learners improving their scores in the AH context, and SA learners obtained larger comprehensibility gains than AH learners, although such improvement was not significant. In addition, results indicate that SA participants with initial lower levels of native-like accent and/or comprehensibility obtained significantly greater gains than their peers at home in both dimensions. Further analyses show significant large positive correlations between the two speech dimensions at the two testing times in the case of both groups of participants, suggesting that the more native-like accent, the greater the comprehensibility. Regarding the aspects that listeners heeded when rating speech samples, pronunciation is the main aspect taken into account when assessing L2 learners’ FA and comprehensibility. Listeners in our study did not leave aside reference to accent or native-likeness in their comprehensibility ratings. |
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