Session Foreign Lang. Acqu. II:

Foreign Language Acquisition II: Foreign Accent

Type: oral
Chair: Wim v. Dommelen
Date: Tuesday - August 07, 2007
Time: 13:20
Room: 6 (Black)

 

Foreign Lang. Acqu. II-1 FACTORS ACCOUNTING FOR ATTAINMENT IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE PHONOLOGICAL COMPETENCE
Chris Sheppard, Waseda University
Chiyo Hayashi, Kunitachi College of Music
Ai Ohmori, International Christian University
Paper File
  This paper reports research which first examines the limits in attaining phonological competence of foreign language learners who have not resided in a target language community, and second, attempts to identify factors which explain variance in this competence. After rating fifty-two samples from 67 participants, the results showed that EFL learners were able to attain a near-native like pronunciation for all but sentences. The factors which explained individual difference in pronunciation attainment were self rated musical ability, attitudes toward learning pronunciation, length of time spent learning the language and strategy use.
Foreign Lang. Acqu. II-2 PERCEPTION OF ACCENT BY L2 STUDENTS OF ENGLISH: SUBJECTIVE PREFERENCE VS. OBJECTIVE INTELLIGIBILITY
Teresa Lopez-Soto, University of Seville
Dario Barrera-Pardo, University of Seville
Paper File
  This experimental study deals with the perception of regionally coloured accents of English in Ireland, Great Britain, and the United States. The 3 standards were chosen after a preliminary survey had taken place where students showed a higher knowledge of the culture of these 3 different groups over the Australasian variety. 14 different recordings were selected from the International Dialects of English Archives and played to students of English as a Foreign language (EFL) at the University level. To pursuit this goal, a questionnaire was devised on-line so that a mixed groups of students could express their opinion on a three-layer approach towards the perception of the audio files: personality identification and preference, perceived linguistic divergence, and geographic identifiably. The study is done in the context of EFL in Spain.
Foreign Lang. Acqu. II-3 Global Foreign Accent in Native German Speech
Esther de Leeuw, Speech Science Research Centre, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh
Monika Schmid, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Ineke Mennen, Speech Science Research Centre, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh
Paper File
  The primary aim of this study was to determine whether German native speakers who immigrated abroad are perceived to have a global foreign accent in their native speech. German monolingual listeners assessed global foreign accent of German immigrants living in either Anglophone Canada or the Dutch Netherlands, and five German monolingual controls. A highly significant difference was revealed between the foreign accent rating (FAR) of the consecutive bilinguals and the German monolingual control group as well as a significant difference between the two groups of second language learners. Multiple regression analyses indicated that for English L2 speakers, age of arrival (AOA) was the only significant predictor variable; whereas for Dutch L2 speakers, the averaged variable of contact with German (CONTACT) was the only significant predictor variable. Further research is necessary in order to illuminate cross-linguistic differences, particularly with regard to amount and type of contact to the native language.

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