Linguistic Dimensions of Accentedness, Comprehensibility and Intelligibility: Exploring Listener Effects in American, Moroccan, Turkmen and Chinese Varieties of English

2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 520-542
Author(s):  
Mei Wei
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
American English ◽  
Linguistic Variables ◽  
Test Results ◽  
Chinese Speakers ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
International Experiences ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Vocal Intensity ◽  
The One

Abstract The present study examines accentedness, comprehensibility, and intelligibility of American English, Moroccan English, Turkmen English, and Chinese English, from the perspectives of three groups of listeners: native speakers of English and Chinese speakers of English with or without international experiences. Of the 145 listeners, 38 had face-to-face interviews. These listener groups were asked to listen to the recordings of the four English varieties and fill in a cloze test. Results indicated that the three listener groups differed significantly in rating comprehensibility of American English, Moroccan English and Chinese English but they did not give Turkmen English statistically different ratings; there were no significant differences in accentedness ratings except for Chinese English; and there were significant differences in the intelligibility scores of the four English varieties. In addition, with respect to seven linguistic variables—speed, clarity, intonation, smoothness and fluency, vocal intensity, pause, vocabulary and grammar, there were significant differences in three listener groups’ rating of six variables in American English except the one of “speed”. By contrast, Chinese English received significantly different ratings only in “proper speed”. No differences were found in the ratings for Moroccan English and Turkmen English. Finally, unlike Chinese listeners without international experiences, native listeners and Chinese listeners with international experiences shared some similarities in correlations between the ratings of accentedness and comprehensibility and those of linguistic variables on Moroccan English, Turkmen English, and Chinese English. However, the results for American English from Chinese listeners without international experiences and native listeners seemed to be more alike. Linguistic variables correlating with accentedness and comprehensibility of American English showed a mixed profile. Qualitative data provided more variant elaborations on the pronunciations and language uses of the speakers.

scholarly journals The use of discourse markers but and so by native English speakers and Chinese speakers of English

Pragmatics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 479-506 ◽  
Author(s):  
Binmei Liu
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Communicative Competence ◽  
Oral Proficiency ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Oral Discourse ◽  
Chinese Speakers ◽  
Native Speakers Of English

Abstract Previous studies have found that but and so occur frequently in native and non-native English speakers’ speech and that they are easy to acquire by non-native English speakers. The current study compared ideational and pragmatic functions of but and so by native and non-native speakers of English. Data for the study were gathered using individual sociolinguistic interviews with five native English speakers and ten L1 Chinese speakers. The results suggest that even though the Chinese speakers of English acquired the ideational functions of but and so as well as the native English speakers, they underused the pragmatic functions of them. The findings indicate that there is still a gap between native and non-native English speakers in communicative competence in the use of but and so. The present study also suggests that speakers’ L1 (Mandarin Chinese) and overall oral proficiency in oral discourse affect their use of but and so.

Native Speakers Pronunciation of Foreign Names

Babel ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 245-259
Author(s):  
Judith Rosenhouse
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Field Study ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
American English ◽  
Wide Spread ◽  
Personal Names ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Phonetic Features ◽  
Language Environment

Due to various reasons, proper names (personal names) are often considered a separate group within the noun category of a language. Nowadays, foreign names are much more wide-spread, perhaps, than ever before. This fact causes pronunciation difficulties to speakers in the native-language environment. Moreover, the foreign origin of a name remains long after an individual’s immigration, and many foreign names are integrated into the absorbing language. Two problem areas arise for speakers of a certain language who have to pronounce foreign names: on the written modality level, letter-to-sound correspondence, and on the aural modality, the pronunciation of the foreign name (according to the speaker’s L1). These issues require decisions about phonological and phonetic features of the foreign language which are to be adopted or discarded in pronouncing a name. Based on our field study, various solutions of these problems are here described and discussed. It appears that native speakers of English (not only American English, as our study reveals) do not base their decisions only on the graphic form of the names (letter sequences); their experience with other languages affects their productions. In addition, not all letter sequences yield identical pronunciation decisions. Thus, solutions are not uniform. Examples are given from French surnames and personal names that occur in English in the USA.

A comparative Analysis of apology Speech acts between American English and Iraqi Kurdish

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (7) ◽  
pp. 19
Author(s):  
Rawshan Ibrahim Tahir ◽  
Ambigapathy Pandian
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Explicit Expression ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
American English ◽  
Completion Task ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
New Strategies

The present study is a comparative analysis of apology speech acts in both native speakers of Kurdish and native speakers of American English. It aims at finding out the similarities and differences in the strategies used to apologize in both languages. Therefore, a Discourse completion Task (DCT) questionnaire consisted of 15 situations was used to collect the data from 50 native speakers of English and 50 native speakers of Kurdish language. The findings revealed that both languages used similar five main strategies to apologize which confirm the universality of speech acts. However, the differences came out in the use of sub-strategies of an explicit expression of apology; native speakers of English used more an expression of regret strategy to perform an apology while native speakers of Kurdish used offer of an apology strategy more to apologize. Furthermore, the differences occurred in the frequency of strategies used to apologize in both languages. The study also revealed the occurrence of other new strategies in Kurdish Language that did not exist in English languag

Bangladeshi EFL Learners’ English Connectors: Overused or Underused?

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (7) ◽  
pp. 1357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Syed Md Golam Faruk ◽  
Pulak Barua
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
The Other ◽  
Final Exam ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
English Writing ◽  
English Only ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The One

The paper investigates the answer scripts of an “English Writing” exam of 72 students in a Bangladeshi university in order to find out the nature and extent of the use of connectors in their second semester-final exam. It also tries to find out similarities and differences between the connector use of Bangladeshi non-native speakers (BNNS) and that of French, Japanese, Swedish, and Chinese non-native speakers on the one hand and between the connector use of BNNS and that of the native speakers of English (only British and American) on the other. To this end, the secondary data for other non-native and native speakers (NS) of almost the same age and level were collected from some published articles. The paper finds that in comparison to NS, BNNS, like most other non-native speakers, underuse most of the connectors.

Acoustic Sources of Accent in Second Language Japanese Speech

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 333-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaori Idemaru ◽  
Peipei Wei ◽  
Lucy Gubbins
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
American English ◽  
First Language ◽  
Foreign Accent ◽  
Prosodic Features ◽  
Acoustic Measurements ◽  
Acoustic Characteristics ◽  
Chinese Speakers

This study reports an exploratory analysis of the acoustic characteristics of second language (L2) speech which give rise to the perception of a foreign accent. Japanese speech samples were collected from American English and Mandarin Chinese speakers ( n = 16 in each group) studying Japanese. The L2 participants and native speakers ( n = 10) provided speech samples modeling after six short sentences. Segmental (vowels and stops) and prosodic features (rhythm, tone, and fluency) were examined. Native Japanese listeners ( n = 10) rated the samples with regard to degrees of foreign accent. The analyses predicting accent ratings based on the acoustic measurements indicated that one of the prosodic features in particular, tone (defined as high and low patterns of pitch accent and intonation in this study), plays an important role in robustly predicting accent rating in L2 Japanese across the two first language (L1) backgrounds. These results were consistent with the prediction based on phonological and phonetic comparisons between Japanese and English, as well as Japanese and Mandarin Chinese. The results also revealed L1-specific predictors of perceived accent in Japanese. The findings of this study contribute to the growing literature that examines sources of perceived foreign accent.

Smiling synchronicity and gaze patterns in dyadic humorous conversations

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisa Gironzetti ◽  
Lucy Pickering ◽  
Meichan Huang ◽  
Ying Zhang ◽  
Shigehito Menjo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Attentional Resources ◽  
Gaze Patterns ◽  
Computer Mediated ◽  
Humor Studies ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Video And Audio

AbstractThis present article is part of a larger study on speaker-hearer allocation of attentional resources in face-to-face interactions. The goal of the paper is twofold: first, we present results concerning the degree of correlation, in computer-mediated conversation, between speaker’s timing and intensity of smiling when humor is either present or absent in the conversation. The results were obtained from the analysis of five dyadic interactions between English speakers that were video and audio recorded, transcribed, and analyzed to establish a baseline of synchronicity of smiling among participants. From the study it emerged that conversational partners engaged in humorous conversations not only reciprocate each other’s smiling, but also match each other’s smiling intensity. Our data led to the identification of different smiling and non-smiling synchronic behaviors that point to the existence of a synchronous multimodal relationship between humorous events and smiling intensity for conversational partners. Second, in the last part of the paper, we argue for the need of a multimodal conversational corpus in humor studies and present the corpus that is being collected, annotated, and analyzed at Texas A&M University–Commerce. The corpus consists of humorous interactions among dyads of native speakers of English, Spanish, and Chinese for which video, audio, and eye-tracking data have been recorded. As part of this section of the paper, we also present some preliminary results based on the analysis of one English conversation, and some exploratory analysis of Chinese data, that show that greater attention is paid to facial areas involved in smiling when humor is present. This study sheds light on the role of smiling as a discourse marker (Attardo, S., L. Pickering, F. Lomotey & S. Menjo. 2013. Multimodality in Conversational Humor.

scholarly journals Speech Act of Greeting for American Native Speakers of English and Saudi Native Speakers of Arabic: A Comparative Study

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (7) ◽  
pp. 243
Author(s):  
Rehan Almegren
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Social Distance ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
American English ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Arabic Speakers ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Saudi Arabic

This study focuses on comparing the speech acts of native Arabic speakers of Saudi region and English speakers of America, which help depict the impact of the variables involved, namely status, setting, social distance and situation formality. This paper makes a significant contribution for future researchers, as it is of help to researchers in the speech act area specifically in terms of Saudi Arabic and American English. It will be also of help to those learning Arabic or English and those who teach it in these two countries. Thus, the outcome of this research will contribute to depict the differences and the similarities in the use of greeting strategies between two different groups of respondents from diverse linguistic and cultural domains. Data was collected using the discourse completion test (DCT), developed by Cohen, Olshtain & Rosenstien (1985). Fifty female respondents within the age group of 20-25 years were selected from each group to participate in research procedures. Although the inclusion of male respondents would have made the process complex, it would have provided with comparatively more accurate outcomes if managed properly. The findings showed that linguistic and cultural differences, variables of social distance, social status, settings and situation formality greatly influenced the decision-making of Saudi Native Speakers of Arabic and American Native Speakers of English, pertaining to their usage of greeting strategies as part of their speech acts. For example, differences can be observed between these two speakers in terms of their greeting strategies; American English speakers attach less significance to social and physical distance and hierarchy compared to Saudi Arabic speakers. Similarly, both the groups attach almost equal importance to their initiation words when greeting others. These differences and similarities help determine social status and the relationship between speakers. 

scholarly journals Cross-Cultural Classroom Interaction between Native and Non-native Speakers of English

2018 ◽  
pp. 85-101
Author(s):  
Hanaa Alzalouk ◽  
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Classroom Interaction ◽  
Real Life ◽  
English Language Teaching ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Esl Learners

The purpose of this study was to investigate the interactional conversations between the native speakers (NSs) of English and the non-native speakers (NNSs) of English in a culturally mixed classroom. ESL learners need to be exposed to the second language through authentic and face to face interaction when they have opportunities to interact with NSs outside of the classroom (in real-life situations) and inside the classroom (through group work and pair work activities). Data were collected through conducting an ethnographic research in which classroom observation and semi-structured interviews were the primary data collection tools. Participants were eight MA students in the field of English Language Teaching (ELT) in Nottingham Trent University.

scholarly journals Let's Move It Move It: Thais’ Attitude Toward English as a Lingua Franca

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 716-723
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Dawala Wilang ◽  
Piyathat Siripol
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
American English ◽  
Virtual Community ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Multicultural Environment ◽  
Expanding Circle ◽  
Let's Move ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Concentric Circles

Recently, a Facebook group under the name "โยกย้าย มาส่ายสะโพกโยกย้าย" (Let's move it move it) brought together Thais around the globe who share a similar goal of moving abroad. One of the most popular discussions was their concern over their English language skills and the “move-in” country of preference. Since this virtual community is an interesting context to explore, a survey questionnaire was distributed online to know their attitudes toward English as a lingua franca (ELF). To know if Thais' attitude on EFL differs based on their "move-in" country of preference, the participants were categorized based on Kachruvian three concentric circles – Inner, Outer, and Expanding as well as Any circle – a combination of two or more circle. Findings show the strongly favorable attitudes of Thais toward the following aspects - the focus on intelligibility, the use of English to communicate with both native and non-native speakers of English, learning materials for a multicultural environment, and exposure to varieties of English. Despite the favorable attitude, the Expanding circle and Any circle groups strongly agreed that Standard British or American English should be taught. All circles disagreed that "any linguistic use that does not conform to Standard English is incorrect." Discussions of results were provided in the study.

Effective Technology-Mediated Education for Adult Chinese Learners

2011 ◽  
pp. 2187-2204
Author(s):  
Hsianghoo Steve Ching ◽  
Carmel McNaught ◽  
Paul W.T. Poon
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
Online Learning ◽  
Adult Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Effective Professional Development ◽  
Chinese Learners ◽  
Effective Technology ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Work Done

This article will address several areas relating to online learning and technology. We will report on work done in the development of four models that have been used to deliver effective professional development for adult learners. The courses are run in Taiwan from a base at Feng Chia University in Taichung, and all the attendees are Chinese. The key content is developed by instructors who are all native speakers of English from a range of countries. Some of this key content is delivered face-to-face and some is delivered virtually. Course facilitators are experienced in online learning and are Chinese. Our models thus utilize both internationally known teachers and local expertise.

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