This article first appeared in TESOL Quarterly, Volume 49, Number 4, pgs. 814–837. Subscribers can access issues here. Only TESOL members may subscribe. To become a member of TESOL, please click here, and to purchase articles, please visit Wiley-Blackwell. © TESOL International Association.

With languages such as English, Spanish, Arabic, or Chinese becoming ever more prominent in international trade, education, and popular culture, particularly in communication among nonnative speakers, understanding various components of second language (L2) speaking ability emerges as an important goal for both language researchers and teachers. One key component of speaking ability is pronunciation, which has typically been discussed with reference to two broad constructs, namely, understanding and nativelikeness (see Derwing & Munro, 2009; Levis, 2005). Understanding embraces various aspects of speakers' ability to make themselves understood. Following common research and assessment practice, understanding is often measured as comprehensibility or listeners' perception of how easy or difficult it is for them to understand L2 speech, rated on 7- or 9-point scales. Nativelikeness, which broadly refers to speakers' ability to approximate speech patterns of the target-language community, is usually operationalized as a listener-based rating of accentedness, also using 7- or 9-point scales.

Although researchers have consistently underscored comprehensibility as a more realistic goal for ensuring communicative success, compared to accent reduction or nativelikeness (e.g., Derwing & Munro, 2009; Levis, 2005), there still remains a need to distinguish how various aspects of L2 speech (at the level of phonology, fluency, lexis, grammar, or discourse) feed into comprehensibility and how they impact accentedness. Previous research has shown that while accent is linked primarily to phonology- and fluency-based characteristics of L2 speech, comprehensibility is additionally linked to grammatical and lexical variables (e.g., Saito, Trofimovich, & Isaacs, 2014, in press; Trofimovich & Isaacs, 2012). However, despite the fact that several (if not most) theoretical perspectives in L2 pronunciation learning ascribe an important role to speakers' first language (L1) in determining the rate and ultimate success of learning (e.g., Eckman, 2004; Escudero & Boersma, 2004; Flege, 2003), previous research on comprehensibility and accent paid little attention to speakers' L1. In fact, most current evidence on L2 speech rating comes from studies that have either treated speakers of various L1s as a single group (e.g., Derwing, Munro, & Wiebe, 1998) or focused only on a single L1 group (e.g., Munro & Derwing, 1999). This limitation makes it unclear to what extent the linguistic variables that feed into comprehensibility and accentedness are specific to the speaker's L1. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to clarify the relationship between comprehensibility and accentedness, investigating the effect of speakers' L1 on listener perception of L2 comprehensibility and accentedness.

Disentangling Comprehensibility From Accent

For many L2 speakers and their teachers, the ideal ultimate learning goal is often to acquire the linguistic ability of a native speaker, characterized by native or near-native accent (Tokumoto & Shibata, 2011). However, adult L2 speakers rarely pass for native speakers (Bongaerts, van Summeren, Planken, & Schils, 1997), so accented L2 speech is generally seen as normal and often unavoidable, even for speakers who begin learning at an early age (Flege, Munro, & MacKay, 1995). Considering the difficulty of acquiring nativelike L2 speech, adopting a more realistic learning goal has been encouraged, with a particular focus on comprehensibility or ease of understanding (Derwing & Munro, 2009; Levis, 2005). Indeed, even a heavy L2 accent does not preclude speakers from being highly comprehensible (Munro & Derwing, 1999). A focus on comprehensibility also seems sensible from a practical perspective, given that the interlocutor's goal in most real-world contexts is to get his or her message across rather than to pass for a native speaker. Thus, to make informed decisions about future learning goals and to address these goals through instruction, L2 speakers and their teachers need to know which aspects of language contribute to comprehensible speech and which are tied to foreign accent.

This article first appeared in TESOL Quarterly, 49, 814–837. For permission to use text from this article, please go to Wiley-Blackwell and click on "Request Permissions" under "Article Tools."
doi: 10.1002/tesq.203

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