La inteligibilidad, comprensibilidad y el acento extranjero en inglés en estudiantes universitarios españoles : un estudio de factores sociodemográficos y fonológicosThe intelligibility, comprehensibility and foreign-accentedness of Spanish University students in English : a study of sociodemographic and phonological factors

Résumé

Pronunciation has long been seen as one of those aspects of English with whichSpanish speakers of the language seem to struggle (cf. Coe 2001, Mott 2005, Walker 2010,Gómez González & Sánchez Roura 2016, Calvo Benzies 2017). This research aimed to determine how a series of factors influence pronunciation performance scores of Spanishspeakers in English (N = 60). These were sampled among university students on bilingualand monolingual degrees and recorded for this study. Said performance was measuredusing three variables: intelligibility (INT), comprehensibility (COM) and foreignaccentedness(FA) (Dependent Variables (DVs)). The predictor variables in the statisticalanalysis were based on the speakers’ sociodemographic characteristics, languagebackground and the phonetic realisations of a set of pronunciation features. Another setof variables having an impact on the scores was related to the listeners (N = 330) whoparticipated in the assessment part of the study. Additionally, a qualitative analysis of aseries of intelligibility breakdowns was conducted, whose results show the potentialinterpretations of the non-standard pronunciations of a series of features. Finally, thedissertation also gives insight into the difficulty in the acquisition of specific segmentalphonological features for Spanish learners at CEFR levels B2 and above (Council of Europe2001, 2018)...