Author: Kimberly R. Scott

Publisher:

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 9781423542049

In many situations today non-native speakers of English must speak English as an international language or as a common language between two non- native speakers. Such communication is often complicated by adverse listening conditions such as noise and high stress levels. This study examined the effects of linguistic predictability and noise factors on the intelligibility of non- native speakers of English with varying degrees of accent when their listeners were native English speakers. Speech recordings were elicited from four adult male native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese and one native speaker of English. Sentences from the Speech Perception in Noise lists were read by each speaker, representing native, mild, mild-moderate, moderate-strong, and strong foreign accents. Sentences were mixed with multi-talker babble with a signal-to-noise ratio of 6 dB, 10 dB, and 15 dB. Target words in half of the sentences were highly predictable, and the remaining half were of low predictability. All 30 listeners were native speakers of English. They wrote down the last word of each SPIN sentence from recordings of random selections of speakers and noise levels and rated spontaneous speech samples for degree of perceived accent and intelligibility pre- and post- SPIN listening task. Analyses of the data suggest that all three factors--accent, noise, and predictability-had a combined effect on the intelligibility of non-native speakers of English. Even the intelligibility of the native speaker was compromised when the signal-to-noise ratio was low and when the linguistic predictability was also low. When the native listener was challenged further by the addition of a foreign accent, intelligibility was even more compromised. This effect was greater as the degree of accent became progressively stronger.