Intelligibility and accentedness in conversations amongst international students in Australia

Despite the prevalence of English conversations being held by Non Native Speakers (NNS), little research has investigated accent, the most salient aspect of pronunciation, in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) interactions. The aim of this study is to investigate two facets of accentedness: the intelligibility of accented speech for Non-Native Listeners (NNL) and the impact that language attitude has on the judgment of accentedness. While accentedness has been shown to be both independent of intelligibility and extremely salient to Native Listeners (NL) (Derwing 2008; Nelson, 2008), there is a significant gap in our understanding of how accented English speech is judged by NNL (Derwing & Munro 1997; 2009; Munro & Derwing 1995; 1999; 2010; Munro 2007). It is hypothesised that there is a dependency between the intelligibility scores of foreign accented speech and accentedness judgment in ELF contexts. Moreover, it is believed that the judgment of accentedness is influenced by attitudes held by the NNL. The intelligibility of accented speech will be investigated by measuring the accuracy of transcribed audio samples. Judgment of accentedness will be measured using a Likert scale and journal entries. Attitudes towards accentedness will, firstly, be quantified using a survey that rates language attitudes on a Likert scale, followed by a semi-structured interview that will elicit attitudes towards accentedness. The results of this study will have implications for the teaching and learning of pronunciation, listening skills, and curriculum design. Furthermore, the findings may allude to fundamental differences in how NNL and Native Listeners (NL) perceive second language (L2) speech; thus, such inferences may lead to a shift in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) perspectives.