Evaluations of foreign accent in extemporaneous and read material

Abstract

Previous research has yielded apparently contradictory evidence about whether the utterances of second language learners are likely to be perceived as more foreign accented when the speech material has been read or produced extemporaneously. One difficulty with some previous studies is that different test material was used under the two speaking conditions. It is possible that, in some studies, utterances read by L2 learners were evaluated as more accented than extemporaneous speech, not because speakers were unable to implement knowledge about individual segments or prosodic features when under pressure to read in the L2 (as has been supposed), but because of a higher frequency of errors or even a reduction in fluency as a result of less familiarity with vocabulary or syntactic structures, or a preponderance of relatively difficult phones in the reading material. In this study, native Mandarin speakers produced extemporaneous narratives and then read transcriptions of their own utterances. An analysis of accentedness ratings from native English judges revealed no advantage for the speakers in the extemporaneous speaking condition. However, evidence was obtained in support of the hypothesis that familiarity with particular non-native speech samples and/or speakers may lead to perceptions of greater foreign- accentedness.