Comprehensibility, or ease of understanding, has emerged as an important construct in second language (L2) speech research. Many studies have examined the linguistic features that underlie this construct, but there has been limited work on behavioral and affective predictors. The goal of this study was therefore to examine the extent to which anxiety and collaborativeness predict interlocutors’ perception of one another’s comprehensibility. Twenty dyads of L2 English speakers completed three interactive tasks. Throughout their 17-minute interaction, they were periodically asked to evaluate their own and each other’s anxiety and collaborativeness and to rate their partner’s comprehensibility using 100-point scales. Mixed-effects models showed that partner anxiety and collaborativeness predicted comprehensibility, but the relative importance of each predictor depended on the nature of the task. Self-collaborativeness was also related to comprehensibility. These findings suggest that comprehensibility is sensitive to a range of linguistic, behavioral, and affective influences.

This study investigated relationships among intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness in the speech of L2 learners of Spanish who completed a prompted response speaking task. Thirty native Spanish listeners from Spain were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk to transcribe and rate extracted utterances, which were also coded for grammatical and phonemic errors, and speaking rate. Descriptively, although most utterances were intelligible, their comprehensibility and accentedness varied substantially. Mixed-effects modeling showed that comprehensibility was significantly associated with intelligibility whereas accentedness was not. Additionally, phonemic and grammatical errors were significant predictors of intelligibility and comprehensibility, but only phonemic errors were significantly related to accentedness. Overall, phonemic errors displayed a stronger negative association with the listener-based dimensions than grammatical errors. These findings suggest that English-speaking learners of Spanish are not as uniformly intelligible and comprehensible as FL instructors might believe and shed light on relationships among speech constructs in an L2 other than English.

When we are born our perceptual systems are capable of discriminating sounds that occur in English, Spanish, Hindi, or any other language. During the first year, our perception begins to zero in on the particular set of sounds that are contrastive in our native language(s) (L1s) (Kuhl et al., 2006). For example, a child whose parents are L1 English speakers will pick up on the fact that /b/ and /p/ are contrastive in English (e.g., “bet” vs. “pet”) and that the major difference is in the burst of air that occurs when the stop is released (i.e., there is a stronger burst of air, or more aspiration, on /p/ than /b/). A child whose parents are L1 Hindi speakers will pick up on this contrast, which also occurs in Hindi, as well as other contrasts that occur in Hindi but not in English. As our perception becomes attuned to our L1(s), we become more sensitive to L1 contrasts, such as /b/ vs. /p/ for L1 English speakers, and less sensitive to non-native contrasts, even though our ability to discriminate non-native sounds remains intact. When we begin to learn another language (L2) later in life, be it through formal instruction at university or through immersion if we move to another country where a different language is spoken, our L1 acts as a filter, altering our perception of L2 sounds. Consequently, we may not detect differences between contrastive L2 sounds that are not contrastive in our L1, and we may fail to notice the difference between our accented pronunciation of the L2 and the target pronunciation.

This study examined relationships between language learning motivation and the longitudinal development of second language (L2) pronunciation. Twenty-six English-speaking learners of Spanish recorded a simplified picture description task five times over a yearlong period spanning their second, third, and fourth semesters of Spanish language instruction. Learners also completed a quantitative motivation survey based on the L2 Motivational Self System and an open-ended questionnaire on their language learning beliefs once per semester, yielding three measurements. Eighteen native Spanish listeners rated learners’ clips for comprehensibility and accentedness. Although mixed modeling of the motivation data revealed a slightly negative trajectory for motivational subcomponents, qualitative analyses of individual patterns indicate that learners were beginning to formulate and evaluate language learning goals that were set into a larger framework of personal and professional objectives. Mixed effects models of the pronunciation data demonstrate that both comprehensibility and accentedness improved over time. When the quantitative motivation measures were integrated into the modeling process as time-varying fixed effects, effort was significantly related to accentedness, which suggests that effort may have played an increasingly important role in shaping learners’ pronunciation over time.

Models of L2 pronunciation learning hypothesize that accurate speech perception promotes accurate speech production. This claim can be evaluated longitudinally by examining the extent to which changes in stop consonant perception predict changes in stop consonant production. Taking a time-sensitive view of the perception-production link, this study used longitudinal data to analyze perception as a time-varying predictor of production accuracy. Mixed-effects models were fit to oddity, delayed word repetition, and picture description tasks to examine how participants’ perception and production changed over time. Oddity task perception data were then decomposed into their between- and within-subjects components and integrated into the delayed repetition and picture description production models. Surprisingly, only the between-subjects predictors reached significance, and the strength of the perception-production link varied across production tasks and target phones. The methods used have implications for future research on the perception-production link.

Researchers have increasingly turned to Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) to crowdsource speech data, predominantly in English. Although AMT and similar platforms are well positioned to enhance the state of the art in L2 research, it is unclear if crowdsourced L2 speech ratings are reliable, particularly in languages other than English. The present study describes the development and deployment of an AMT task to crowdsource comprehensibility, fluency, and accentedness ratings for L2 Spanish speech samples. Fifty-four AMT workers who were native Spanish speakers from 11 countries participated in the ratings. Intraclass correlation coefficients were used to estimate group-level interrater reliability, and Rasch analyses were undertaken to examine individual differences in rater severity and fit. Excellent reliability was observed for the comprehensibility and fluency ratings, but indices were slightly lower for accentedness, leading to recommendations to improve the task for future data collection.

As Derwing (2010) observed nearly ten years ago, one of the goals of pronunciation research is to identify how different aspects of second language (L2) speech develop over time, providing teachers with information on the pronunciation problems that will work themselves out, versus those that will likely pose an ongoing challenge. At the same time, research must account for the cognitive, socio-affective, and experiential variables that shape pronunciation learning outcomes (Moyer, 2014a, 2014b).

This study examined longitudinal changes in second language (L2) interlocutors’ mutual comprehensibility ratings (perceived ease of understanding speech), targeting comprehensibility as a dynamic, time-varying, inter action-centered construct. In a repeated-measures, within-participants design, 20 pairs of L2 English university students from different language backgrounds engaged in three collaborative and interactive tasks over 17 minutes, rating their partner’s comprehensibility at 2–3 minute intervals using 100-millimeter scales (seven ratings per interlocutor). Mutual comprehensibility ratings followed a U-shaped function over time, with comprehensibility (initially perceived to be high) being affected by task complexity but then reaching high levels by the end of the interaction. The interlocutors’ ratings also became more similar to each other early on and remained aligned throughout the interaction. These findings demonstrate the dynamic nature of comprehensibility between L2 interlocutors and suggest the need for L2 comprehensibility research to account for the effects of interaction, task, and time on comprehensibility measurements.

This study took a dynamic approach to second language (L2) comprehensibility, examining how listeners construct comprehensibility profiles for L2 Spanish speakers during the listening task and what features enhance or diminish comprehensibility. Listeners were 24 native Spanish speakers who evaluated 2–5 minute audio clips recorded by three university-level L2 Spanish speakers responding to two prompts. Listeners rated comprehensibility dynamically, using Idiodynamic Software to upgrade or downgrade comprehensibility over the course of the listening task. Dynamic ratings for one audio clip were video-captured for stimulated recall, and listeners were interviewed to understand which aspects of L2 speech were associated with enhanced versus diminished comprehensibility. Results indicated that clips that were downgraded more often received lower global ratings but upgrading was not associated with higher ratings. Certain problematic features and individual episodes caused listeners’ impressions to converge, though substantial individual variation among listeners was evident.

This study explored teachers’ beliefs about pronunciation instruction in Spanish as a second language (L2). An online survey was used to collect data from 100 participants, grouped into 4 categories based on their previous training in principles and methods of pronunciation instruction. This article reports results from 15 survey items which covered participants’ beliefs regarding 6 major themes: the importance of pronunciation, how pronunciation develops, when to teach it, what to teach, how to teach, and who can teach. Although the results revealed several areas where more methods‐related coursework meant greater alignment between Spanish teachers’ beliefs and findings of L2 pronunciation research, there were other topics on which instructors with more training were likely to express beliefs contrasting with the state of the art. For instance, respondents with more coursework tended to accord more value to pronunciation instruction, to set more pronunciation‐related goals for language instruction, and to reject delaying a focus on pronunciation. Unexpectedly, however, some seemed to uphold the native speaker model, suggesting that teacher training and professional development programs may need to emphasize research‐informed practices and the importance of pedagogical expertise over native like pronunciation.