Alemohammad, Mehdi

The effect of teacher's accent and speech coherence on listener's comprehension

Introduction

For one reason or another, I always felt more disengaged in a class that was run by a foreign lecturer. I found it harder to understand the material that was being presented because of the teacher's accent. But then I realised that not everybody felt the same way. Some people were like me and complained about the same issues, whereas others did not mind it and some even found it to be more interesting and engaging. Therefore here I will try to discover whether the fault lies with non-native teachers and the way in which they deliver their lectures, or whether it is the students' perception of teachers. After all if either is the underlining factor, it is important to address it, as it can have strong implications on how it affects the learning and comprehension of the course content.


O'Malley, Chamot & Kupper (1989) have referred to listening comprehension as "an active process in which individuals focus on selected aspects of aural input, construct meaning from passages, and relate what they hear to existing knowledge" (p. 418). Therefore it can be argued that accented speech can interfere with either of these processes such as the active engagement, understand the meaning of the presented speech and therefore failure to create a link with the prior knowledge. However, Clarke & Garrett (2004) have argued that the implications of listening to non-native accented speech goes beyond the difficulties due to differences in auditory input. Here I will also show how prejudice and stereotyping can also affect comprehension.


Perception studies have shown that people comprehend a speech that was delivered in a native accent much easier than the one which is delivered in a non-native accent (Bent & Barlow, 2003). Even different regional accents can negatively affect performance (Adank, 2009; Floccia, 2006). Anderson-Hsieh & Koehler (1998) suggested that generally the heavier non-native accents lead to lower levels of comprehension. However, research has also shown that, for example, non-native English speakers do not comprehend a speech that was given by a non-native English teacher and a native-accented teacher as well as native English speakers do (Clarke & Garrett, 2004). Therefore it seems that students' proficiency in the language is also a crucial determinant of comprehension. 


However according to Hawkins' (2003) Polystemic Speech Perception, listeners can comprehend the speech without the need for identification of all verbal input. This approach suggests that comprehension of a speech is not solely dependent on the listener's language proficiency, but is, rather, the product of both linguistic and paralinguistic information. While linguistic information includes semantics and grammatical rules ., paralinguistic information is associated with the teachers' characteristics, like accent, voice, gestures etc. The successful comprehension depends on the full understanding of both and connecting this information with prior knowledge. The main focus of this article is on the paralinguistic information, and I start by exploring what non-native teachers think about their experiences within college.


Teachers' point of view


Many non-native speakers instructors have reported difficulties with expressing themselves in the classroom, which can be problematic for the learning process (Alberts, 2008). For example in an in depth interview by Wang (1993), many foreign instructors complained about the difficulties associated with the differences in culture and the relationship with the students. They felt that the relationship with the American students tended to be superficial and unsatisfactory. Indeed, this has shown to be the case by Chen's study (2005), where they found that American students tend to use a more formal language with non-native lecturers, making it difficult to form a more personal relationship. Chen also found that non-native instructors complain that the reason for the weak performance of American students is that they do not work hard enough. They suggested that students associated their incompetence with the teachers' foreign background. Therefore it seems that the difference in culture and the lack of healthy relationship can seriously damage the learning outcomes. 

Students' point of view


Research has generally shown that students hold a negative perception towards non-native teachers. They have reported that foreign born instructors struggle in effective communication and lack the proper teaching ability (Neves & Sanyal, 1991). According to a study by Barros (2010), most students would choose a native lecturer if they had a choice and the reason for this is mainly due to the teachers' foreign accent to which they struggle to attend effectively. Indeed, comprehension of the material was shown to be superior under native lecturer in comparison to non-native lecturers. Furthermore, Ahn (2010) reported that this negative experience of students was mainly due to the foreign accent and the frustration and struggle with understanding that they associated with the non-native lecturers.


Cognitive Explanations


Some have suggested that the reason for impaired comprehension of accented speech is due to increased processing effort on part of the native listeners (Schmid & Yeni-Komshian, 1999). Gill (1994) argued that when faced with unfamiliar accented speech, fewer resources are available for processing the information and more attention is needed to process the information superficially (to become familiarised with the sound) rather than more semantically. Indeed, Dunton et al, (2009) has confirmed this by showing that people who already have less cognitive resources such adults suffering from aphasias tend to make more mistakes when they are faced with unfamiliar accented speech. However, research has also shown that if students perceive the lecturer's accent as "intelligent", they tend to recall more information, perhaps due to more organised attention to the meaning of the information rather than the accent itself (Bottriell & Johnson 1985). Finally, familiarity has been shown to be an important factor, as unfamiliar accents tend to require greater attention, resulting in the listener believing that the lecturer is poor at communication (Hosoda et al, 2007).


Negative Perception, Prejudice, and Stereotyping


Lindemann (2003) found that students perceived accented speech to be less pleasant, even though there is nothing about other languages that can make them intrinsically more pleasing than others (Kinzler et al, 2009). As mentioned above, in regards to unfamiliar accented speech, students might need to pay more attention and therefore this results in perceiving that the speaker is incompetent. However, it seems that students would go one step further. Studies have found that students harshly criticise teachers for their teaching skills (Alberts, 2008), and they give foreign instructors harsher evaluations in comparison to domestic ones, even if they had achieved higher grades with the former (Neves & Sanyal, 1991). In a study by Robin et al (1999), participants heard an audiotape of a lecture by an English native-speaker and were then shown a picture of either a Caucasian person or a Chinese person who was said to be the lecturer. Results showed that students score on the comprehension test was lower for the group that was shown the Chinese person to be the lecturer, even though both groups listened to the same audiotape.  Fleisher et al, (2002) found that college students actually do not perform any differently in classes taught by non-native English speakers in comparison to English native speakers. Alberts (2008) argued that the foreign lecturers do not teach any differently when compared to native English speakers and the students' attitudes play a stronger role in their learning ability. Indeed Anderson-Hsieh et al (1988) has shown that students with a positive attitude towards the teacher's unfamiliar accent and culture made more effort to understand the speech given by the lecturer. It seems to be a good idea to for students to interact with teachers from different nationalities as it can provide them with better multicultural awareness and global issues. However, as some of the above research suggested, different accent, culture and nationality can hinder students learning process. 

Interventions 

Recent studies have shown that comprehension of accented speech can increase after exposure to that accent. For example Clarke & Garrett (2004) presented listeners with sentences spoken in their native accent and a foreign accent. They found that the initial delay for processing non-native accented speech became much smaller after exposure to two to four sentences. However another study by Adank et al, tested Glaswegians with two regional accents. English (Glaswegian accent) and English (Southern accent) and found that they were equally fast for processing both accents. They argued that although they were not trained like in the study by Clarke and Garrett, they have had long term exposure  to this accent as it is the dominant accent on the TV. This was shown to be the case since when they performed the same test with listeners from Souther England, there was a significant delay in processing the words in the Glaswegian accent. It seems therefore that exposure can aid comprehension of different accents. 

Additionally, research has shown that there are no significant differences in the teaching styles of English native speaker versus non-native speakers, when the latter group had received their graduate training in the native speakers' host country (Alberts, 2008). Furthermore, this training has shown to aid instructors to grasp a better understanding of the culture, and therefore a better understanding of students' background in order to form a better relationships.

The paper that I recommend to read is the Thesis by De Barros (2005) which gives a good review and depth of this topic.

Thesis: De Barros, (2010) "It's easier to understand" The effect of a speaker's accent, visual cues, and background knowledge on listening comprehension, Kansas State University.


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