An Essay on Investigating Factors Influencing Comprehensibility of World Englishes by Critically Evaluating Studies in the Domain

Abstract

This paper uncovers the factors that influence comprehensibility – a construct predominantly the focus of Applied Linguistics research due to the dual role that speakers and listeners play in interpreting meaning. The essay discusses the factors highlighted by Smith & Nelson, (1985) outlined in their seminal paper. The critical evaluation of the research published in the domain extrapolates; comprehensibility between interlocutors – NS-NNS and NNS-NNS is not impeded by the accentedness of NNS’s, but predominantly by the lack of familiarity with it. NNS’s comprehensibility for both native listeners/raters and non-native listeners/raters improved with familiarity with the interlocutor or with the variety of World English (WE). Research also emphasized the factors: the interlocutor’s proficiency, L1 interference in L2 utterance, attitude towards WE’s, listeners/raters background, and effort to communicate greatly influenced comprehensibility. Awareness of the NNS’s accent made the listeners/raters overlook other errors of accent either segmental, supra segmental and even lexico-grammatical errors (Webb et al., 2016). In case of NS-NNS communication, it is an unrealistic expectation of the NNS to achieve native like accentedness to make them comprehensible. In high stakes tests like TOEFL and IELTS, the raters could improve L2 comprehensibility by gaining exposure to World English’s. Teachers are advised to include pronunciation in their syllabi. In particular, they could stress on teaching those segmental and supra segmental features which are characteristic of learner's L1 that influence erroneous L2 utterances.