The use of linking or glottalization contributes to the characteristic sound pattern of a language, and the use of one in place of the other may affect a speaker's comprehensibility and fluency in certain contexts. In this study, native speakers of Czech, a language that is associated with a frequent use of glottalization in vowel-initial word…

When it comes to paying attention to the suprasegmental features of their speech, most learners of English seem to be unaware that such phenomena as stress, pitch, duration, and pausing can be of great importance regarding mutual intelligibility. Since they carry a considerable weight of establishing an intelligible conversation, it is argued that…

In commercial materials for the teaching of second language (L2) pronunciation, common bottom-up approaches segment phonology into a series of discrete and decontextualized linguistic components with rules that students are encouraged to internalize. Such approaches seem out of step with recent second language acquisition (SLA) theory and research…

Scholars have argued for the inclusion of different spoken varieties of English in high-stakes listening tests to better represent the global use of English. However, doing so may introduce additional construct-irrelevant variance due to accent familiarity and the shared first language (L1) advantage, which could threaten test fairness. However,…

The purpose of this paper is to examine the intelligibility and attitude towards four English varieties to Korean-speaking learners (KSLs) of English, who have been exposed mainly to General American (or Korean-accented English) in their English language learning classrooms throughout the primary and secondary schools. A total of 105 Korean…

A realistic goal of pronunciation teaching in the second language context is to acquire comfortably intelligible rather than native-like pronunciation. To establish a set of teaching and learning priorities necessary for English teachers and students whose first language is Chinese, the purposes of this study are three fold: (1) Identify the…

As English becomes an established lingua franca in the ASEAN region, what should be the pedagogical approach to oral skills and pronunciation teaching in the region? Should teachers target common features and patterns developing in ASEAN English or target more "Western" pronunciation? This study strives to balance the discussion of the…

A central issue in language testing is the choice of norms, and the need to reconcile notions of "standard" English with local language norms and features. Data from studies of international intelligibility indicate that some features of "standard" language descriptions, based on native-speaker language use, are not essential…

A questionnaire study was conducted to examine how 120 highly experienced EFL (English as a foreign language) teachers in Japan adjust their pronunciation in order to facilitate and refine their students' learning skills to approach mutual intelligibility in second language (L2) classrooms (i.e. "pronunciation-specific teacher talk").…

This study investigated the impact of a well-defined behavioral dysarthria treatment on acoustic and perceptual measures of speech in four adults with dysarthria secondary to stroke. A single-subject A-B-A experimental design was used to measure the effects of the Lee Silverman Voice Treatment (LSVT[R]LOUD) on the speech of individual…

Purpose: Parental reports of communication, listening, and behavior in children receiving a clinical diagnosis of specific language impairment (SLI) or auditory processing disorder (APD) were compared with direct tests of intelligence, memory, language, phonology, literacy, and speech intelligibility. The primary aim was to identify whether there…

This paper first briefly reviews the concept of intelligibility as it has been employed in both English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) and world Englishes (WE) research. It then examines the findings of the Lingua Franca Core (LFC), a list of phonological features that empirical research has shown to be important for safeguarding mutual intelligibility…

Background: Currently, clinicians mainly rely on perceptual judgements to assess intelligibility of dysarthric speech. Although often highly reliable, this procedure is subjective with a lot of intrinsic variables. Therefore, certain benefits can be expected from a speech technology-based intelligibility assessment. Previous attempts to develop an…

This paper tests claims concerning the English as Lingua Franca (ELF) movement's position within the world Englishes paradigm. To do so, it considers the writings of Jennifer Jenkins, a leader in this movement, on what she calls "phonological intelligibility", and the writings of Larry Smith, an established scholar on intelligibility in…

In this study I investigate the impact of different characteristics of the L2 speech signal on the intelligibility of L2 speakers of English to native listeners. Three native listeners were observed and questioned as they orthographically transcribed utterances taken from connected conversational speech produced by three L2 speakers from different…