Typed transcription as a simultaneous measure of foreign-accent comprehensibility and intelligibility: An online replication study

Abstract

Following Munro and Derwing (1995b) extensive research has investigated relationships among foreign accent, comprehensibility, and intelligibility. In most studies, listeners provide scalar judgements for accentedness and comprehensibility, while intelligibility is assessed using paper-and-pencil transcription tasks. In this study, we replicate Derwing and Munro (1997) to determine the effectiveness of typed transcription for simultaneously measuring the intelligibility (via typing accuracy) and comprehensibility (via typing latency) of sentence-level utterances. An analysis of keystroke latencies revealed a significant relationship between typing latency and comprehensibility ratings, but no meaningful relationship between typing latency and accentedness ratings. Intelligibility scores were automatically estimated using Levenschtein distance and were significantly related to comprehensibility but not accentedness ratings. Results suggest that typed transcription offers an effective and efficient method of simultaneously operationalizing both L2 speech comprehensibility and intelligibility.