The Effects of Nonnative Accents on Listening Comprehension: Implications for ESL Assessment

By R. Major, Suzanne Fitzmaurice, F. Bunta, C. Balasubramanian. 2002

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Does a rater’s familiarity with a candidate’s pronunciation affect the rating in oral proficiency interviews? (2011, background): “…accents are easier to comprehend than unfamiliar accents is well-supported in linguistics and cognitive science literature (Brown, 1968; Wilcox, 1978; Eisenstein and Berkowitz, 1981; Ekong, 1982; Richards, 1983; Anderson-Hsieh & Koehler, 1988; Bilbow, 1989; Flowerdew, 1994; Major et al., 2002).”
Revisiting the Intelligibility and Nativeness Principles (2020, background): “Any language in which pronunciation is taught is enriched by its multiple accents, and a wider familiarity with these accents may also promote the ability to interact and understand other speakers (Major et al., 2002; Ockey & French, 2016).”
Raters’ L2 background as a potential source of bias in rating oral performance (2013, result): “They stated that their results were similar to that by other researchers (Major et al., 2002) who also found that raters sometimes understand speech better when it has a very familiar accent.”
Recent developments in second and foreign language listening comprehension research (2007, background): “Speaker accent and dialect, for example, can bias tests against ESL listeners (Major et al. 2002, 2005).”
From One to Multiple Accents on a Test of L2 Listening Comprehension (2016, background): “There are five items based on the conversation and six questions for each lecture.”