Abstract
ABSTRACT Previous studies have examined linguistic and non-linguistic factors affecting the comprehensibility of L2 English speakers. However, there is a relative scarcity of empirical studies specifically investigating how these factors influence the comprehensibility of international teaching assistants (ITAs) as perceived by their undergraduate (UG) students. The current study aimed to fill this gap by examining how linguistic and non-linguistic factors affect American UGs’ judgments of ITAs’ speech comprehensibility and teaching quality. One hundred and ninety-eight U.S. UGs reported their previous experience with and attitudes towards ITAs through a Qualtrics survey, and gave their ratings about ITAs’ speech comprehensibility, segmental and suprasegmental errors, and teaching quality. Results from step-wise regression analyses indicated that segmental errors were statistically significant predictors of UGs’ ratings of ITAs’ comprehensibility and teaching quality, and that UGs who had taken more courses with ITAs had higher ratings of ITAs’ comprehensibility. More notably, UGs’ attitudes towards ITAs were found to contribute to their perceptions of ITAs’ speech comprehensibility and teaching quality. This study concluded with recommendations about how to counter the potential negative effects of biased UG ratings of ITAs so as to promote a healthier environment for ITAs’ professional identity development in higher educational settings.
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