Abstract
AbstractComprehensibility, or ease of understanding, has emerged as an important construct in second language (L2) speech research. Many studies have examined the linguistic features that underlie this construct, but there has been limited work on behavioral and affective predictors. The goal of this study was therefore to examine the extent to which anxiety and collaborativeness predict interlocutors’ perception of one another’s comprehensibility. Twenty dyads of L2 English speakers completed three interactive tasks. Throughout their 17-minute interaction, they were periodically asked to evaluate their own and each other’s anxiety and collaborativeness and to rate their partner’s comprehensibility using 100-point scales. Mixed-effects models showed that partner anxiety and collaborativeness predicted comprehensibility, but the relative importance of each predictor depended on the nature of the task. Self-collaborativeness was also related to comprehensibility. These findings suggest that comprehensibility is sensitive to a range of linguistic, behavioral, and affective influences.
Highlights
To communicate successfully in a second or additional language (L2), speakers must convey their message in a way that listeners can understand
Self-self and partner-partner ratings showed moderate to large correlations, such that the speakers’ self-perceptions of anxiety and collaborativeness were strongly linked (r = À.70) as were the speakers’ judgments of their partner’s anxiety and collaborativeness (r = À.56)
The study allowed for tracking speaker participation on a minute-by-minute timescale, which complements previous longitudinal work (Oga-Baldwin & Nakata, 2017)
Summary
To communicate successfully in a second or additional language (L2), speakers must convey their message in a way that listeners can understand. Listeners may both understand a speaker and find the speaker easy to understand or may understand a speaker while needing to expend considerable effort. When speakers engage in cognitively demanding tasks, their comprehensibility may decrease, and the use of accurate and sophisticated grammar and vocabulary may take on greater importance as they strive to convey complex ideas and relationships (Crowther et al, 2015)
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