Effects of systematic exposure to foreign accented speech on speech intelligibility perceived by Libyan EFL learners
With the ever-increasing population of non-native speakers (NNSs) of English around the globe to the extent of exceeding the population of native speakers, encountering foreign-accented speech (FAS) has become frequent and inevitable. Numerous studies have indicated that FAS presents chall...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2020
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/85376/1/FBMK%202020%2040%20-%20ir.pdf |
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| Summary: | With the ever-increasing population of non-native speakers (NNSs) of English around
the globe to the extent of exceeding the population of native speakers, encountering
foreign-accented speech (FAS) has become frequent and inevitable. Numerous studies have indicated
that FAS presents challenges for accurate and efficient speech communication due to
reduction in speech intelligibility. However, empirical studies have shown that perceptual accuracy
of accented speech can be improved by adequate exposure such as perceptual training. A body of
research on auditory perception has demonstrated generalization of adaptation to FAS within
shared-language background groups and also within different language background groups; however,
many of these studies utilized native speakers of English as evaluators of the degree of
intelligibility. Little attention has been paid to speech intelligibility among diverse groups of
non- native speakers of English. Therefore, this study attempts to determine the degree of
intelligibility of FAS to a group of non-native speakers of English using native and non-native
speaker models as effecting variables to non-native speakers of English. It also seeks to assess
the perceptual learning and benefits of systematic exposure to FAS through training. A training
phase of 10 training sessions was conducted involving exposure to a variety of “sentence-level”
accented English produced by a number of speakers from Malaysia, and native speakers of English
from the U.S.A. The naïve Libyan EFL learners who were randomly selected served as
listeners; they were divided into three groups according to the type of exposure. A single
foreign accent (SFA) group listened to only Malay speakers of English; a multi-foreign accent (MFA)
group listened to Malaysian speakers of English; i.e., Malays and Malaysians of Indian and Chinese
descents and a no foreign-accent (NFA) group served as a control group whose listeners were exposed
to speech from native English speakers. The Bench- Kowal-Bamford (BKB) standard sentences lists
were used as the stimuli for the transcription tasks (tests and training materials). Speech
samples were recorded in a quiet room using PRAAT (Boersma & Weenick, 2016; version 6.0.19), and
presented to listeners in a phonetics laboratory. Data collection was conducted in three stages:
(1) Pretest, which was given before training (2) Post-test A and (3) Post-test B. Both post-tests
were administrated immediately after the 10 training sessions. Using SPSS (Version 22) and
Microsoft Excel (2013), the data was descriptively and inferentially analysed. On average, the
results revealed that the majority of Libyan EFL learners found difficulty in perceiving the
Malaysian English variety. However, the results revealed that perceptual training was
significantly efficient in improving intelligibility of FAS. Among the three types of training/
exposure, training with multiple foreign accents was the method with the most significant
effectiveness to facilitate perception or to enhance intelligibility when exposed to
unfamiliar FAS. Overall, the study concluded that a brief exposure to multiple accented
speakers descending from different language backgrounds was sufficient to facilitate
perception as it implies improvement in speech intelligibility, and it also attenuates initial
perceptual difficulty
when exposed to other unfamiliar foreign accented speech. |
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