This paper reports an empirical study on the intelligibility of English spoken by Chinese University students, aiming to identify the factors that hamper intelligibility and suggest the pedagogical priorities in pronu...This paper reports an empirical study on the intelligibility of English spoken by Chinese University students, aiming to identify the factors that hamper intelligibility and suggest the pedagogical priorities in pronunciation teaching. The participants were 45 university sophomores, whose recorded data were transcribed and evaluated correspondingly by 45 educated listeners from 22 different countries. The results reveal that although the speakers＇ English may have strong accents, it is intelligible to international listeners to a great extent. Phonological problems that hamper intelligibility are vowel length and quality, simplification of diphthongs, voiced and voiceless plosives, dental fricative, word ending nasals, consonant clusters as well as stress, rhythm and intonation.展开更多
基金supported by the Human and Social Sciences Foundation of Ministry of Education entitled "The International Intelligibility of English Spoken by Chinese University Students"(Grant No.11YJC740142)the Fundamental Research Funds for National UniversityChina University of Geosciences(Grant No.CUG130105)
文摘This paper reports an empirical study on the intelligibility of English spoken by Chinese University students, aiming to identify the factors that hamper intelligibility and suggest the pedagogical priorities in pronunciation teaching. The participants were 45 university sophomores, whose recorded data were transcribed and evaluated correspondingly by 45 educated listeners from 22 different countries. The results reveal that although the speakers＇ English may have strong accents, it is intelligible to international listeners to a great extent. Phonological problems that hamper intelligibility are vowel length and quality, simplification of diphthongs, voiced and voiceless plosives, dental fricative, word ending nasals, consonant clusters as well as stress, rhythm and intonation.
