L2 English listeners’ perceived comprehensibility and attitudes towards speech produced by L3 English learners from China

L2 English listeners’ perceived comprehensibility and attitudes towards speech produced by L3 English learners from China

• Chen, Hsueh Chu The Education University of Hong Kong
• Chan, Ching Hang Justine The Education University of Hong Kong

International Journal of Multilingualism, 2024

Routledge

2024

• F Learning & Teaching
  • FE Medium of Instruction, Language of Teaching, Bi-& Multilingual Education, Problems of Bilingualism, Code-mixing & Code-switching

Language Perception Speech Perception Comprehensibility Social Attitudes Multilingualism Multiculturalism

• Hong Kong

• 1997.7 onwards

• Unknown or Unspecified

This study investigated the perceptions of second language (L2) English learners from Hong Kong on the speech produced by third language (L3) English learners from the Greater Bay Area (GBA) of China. Twenty L2 learners from a local university were asked to listen to speech recordings from two L3 learners, and then complete an online survey, which focused on comprehension of the speech and four dimensions of language attitudes, namely Appropriateness, Solidarity, Status, and Dynamism. Results showed correlations between the phonological performance of learners and the perception of listeners. Specifically, vowel replacement and addition, as well as consonant addition were found to have a negative correlation with the learners’ actual comprehensibility. Replacing /ə/ with Chinese ‘er’ /ɚ/ only affected their perceived comprehensibility. For perceived attitude, the presence of vowel replacement and addition had an adverse effect on the rating of Dynamism. These two features, along with consonant addition, also negatively affected the rating of Status. Moreover, consonant addition was the sole factor that negatively affected the rating of Solidarity. These findings provided pedagogical insights for learners to communicate in English as well as social implications for language paradigm, particularly in a multilingual and multicultural context such as the GBA. Copyright © 2024 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

• English

Journal Articles

• 14790718

• 10.1080/14790718.2024.2379549

https://bibliography.lib.eduhk.hk/bibs/0109b85d

2025-02-05