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Perception and Pronunciation in Fluency Assessment

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posted on 2015-12-01, 12:28 authored by Norman Glenn Fulcher, Kevin Browne
This chapter argues that any definition of the construct of fluency must include the familiarity of the listener with the entire context of an utterance. This extends to pronunciation, the intelligibility of which is an interaction between the phonological content of the utterance and the familiarity of the listener with the second language (L2) speech produced by speakers from a specific first language (L1) background. This position recognizes that successful communication is not merely a matter of efficient cognitive processing on the part of the speaker. Fluency is as much about perception as it is about performance. This is a strong theoretical stance, which can be situated within an interactionist perpective on language use in applied linguistics (and social sciences more generally). Good theory generates specific predictions that may be empirically tested. If the listener is critical to the construct, we would expect to discover two facts. Firstly, that variation in listener familiarity with L2 speech results in changes to scores on speaking tests. Secondly, that this variation is associated with estimates of intelligibility when the speaker is kept constant. In this chapter we describe a study that investigates these two predictions. We situate the findings in the context of language testing, where variation in familiarity among raters is a cause for concern.

Funding

Grants: European Commission: L2 COMMUNICATION - Fostering cross-cultural communication: Identifying the linguistic factors that promote comprehensibility in academic and workplace settings (303413) EUR 6,000 BPC fee funded by the EC FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilot

History

Citation

Fulcher, NG;Browne, K, Perception and Pronunciation in Fluency Assessment, ed. Issacs, T. ; Trofimovich, P., 'Interfaces in second language pronunciation assessment: interdisciplinary perspectives', Multilingual Matters

Author affiliation

/Organisation/COLLEGE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, ARTS AND HUMANITIES/School of Education

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Published in

Fulcher

Publisher

Multilingual Matters

isbn

978-1-78309-683-1;9781783096848;9781783096855

Acceptance date

2015-12-01

Copyright date

2016

Available date

2018-09-08

Publisher version

http://www.multilingual-matters.com/display.asp?isb=9781783096831 https://zenodo.org/record/165465#.W5Jexl5KiUm

Editors

Issacs, Talia;Trofimovich, Pavel

Language

en

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