Native-speaker raters of Arabic-accented English speech focused more on prosodic elements (stress, rhythm, intonation, speech rate, sentence melody) than on individual sounds¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r1 · q2
Currency · newest study 2015 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? In the pilot phase, native speakers asked to rate speech samples on a 1-5 scale focused more on prosodic elements — stress, rhythm, intonation, speech rate and sentence melody — than on other aspects. → Al-Ahdal 2015

Evidence¶

Al-Ahdal 2015¶

Al-Ahdal, A. A. M. H., Al-Hattami, A. A., Al-Awaid, S. A. A., & Al-Mashaqba, N. J. H. (2015). Pronunciation for the Arab Learners of EFL: Planning for Better Outcomes. English Language Teaching, 8(10). https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v8n10p100

q2 · i? · causal · r1

Pilot phase of the same small study: native-speaker colleagues rated recorded read-aloud samples of a 1000-word translated story without knowing the subjects' language background. The finding is the authors' conclusion from that pilot; no statistic is printed.

"At the end of the pilot study, we had arrived at the conclusion that native speakers focused more on prosodic elements viz. stress, rhythm, intonatio n, speech rate and sentence melody when asked to rate speech samples on a scale of 1-5"

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• The learner's first language influences target-language pronunciation and is a significant factor in foreign accents, causing errors in aspiration, intonation, and rhythm — related
• Gains were largest in stress and pronunciation, smallest in speech-sound articulation, and about 10% of experimental students showed no progress — related