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DECONSTRUCTING COMPREHENSIBILITY

Identifying the Linguistic Influences on Listeners’ L2 Comprehensibility Ratings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 August 2012

Talia Isaacs  and
Pavel Trofimovich
Talia Isaacs*
Affiliation:
University of Bristol
Pavel Trofimovich
Affiliation:
Concordia University
*
*Correspondence regarding this work should be addressed to: Talia Isaacs, Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol, 35 Berkeley Square, Clifton, Bristol, United Kingdom BS8 1JA; e-mail: talia.isaacs@bristol.ac.uk.
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Abstract

Comprehensibility, a major concept in second language (L2) pronunciation research that denotes listeners’ perceptions of how easily they understand L2 speech, is central to interlocutors’ communicative success in real-world contexts. Although comprehensibility has been modeled in several L2 oral proficiency scales—for example, the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or the International English Language Testing System (IELTS)—shortcomings of existing scales (e.g., vague descriptors) reflect limited empirical evidence as to which linguistic aspects influence listeners’ judgments of L2 comprehensibility at different ability levels. To address this gap, a mixed-methods approach was used in the present study to gain a deeper understanding of the linguistic aspects underlying listeners’ L2 comprehensibility ratings. First, speech samples of 40 native French learners of English were analyzed using 19 quantitative speech measures, including segmental, suprasegmental, fluency, lexical, grammatical, and discourse-level variables. These measures were then correlated with 60 native English listeners’ scalar judgments of the speakers’ comprehensibility. Next, three English as a second language (ESL) teachers provided introspective reports on the linguistic aspects of speech that they attended to when judging L2 comprehensibility. Following data triangulation, five speech measures were identified that clearly distinguished between L2 learners at different comprehensibility levels. Lexical richness and fluency measures differentiated between low-level learners; grammatical and discourse-level measures differentiated between high-level learners; and word stress errors discriminated between learners of all levels.

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ARTICLES
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Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 34 , Issue 3 , September 2012 , pp. 475 - 505
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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