The present study examines accentedness, comprehensibility, and intelligibility of American English, Moroccan English, Turkmen English, and Chinese English, from the perspectives of three groups of listeners: native s...The present study examines accentedness, comprehensibility, and intelligibility of American English, Moroccan English, Turkmen English, and Chinese English, from the perspectives of three groups of listeners: native speakers of English and Chinese speakers of English with or without international experiences. Of the 145 listeners, 38 had face-to-face interviews. These listener groups were asked to listen to the recordings of the four English varieties and fill in a cloze test.Results indicated that the three listener groups differed significantly in rating comprehensibility of American English, Moroccan English and Chinese English but they did not give Turkmen English statistically different ratings;there were no significant differences in accentedness ratings except for Chinese English;and there were significant differences in the intelligibility scores of the four English varieties. In addition, with respect to seven linguistic variables-speed, clarity, intonation,smoothness and fluency, vocal intensity, pause, vocabulary and grammar, there were significant differences in three listener groups’ rating of six variables in American English except the one of“speed”. By contrast, Chinese English received significantly different ratings only in “proper speed”. No differences were found in the ratings for Moroccan English and Turkmen English.Finally, unlike Chinese listeners without international experiences, native listeners and Chinese listeners with international experiences shared some similarities in correlations between the ratings of accentedness and comprehensibility and those of linguistic variables on Moroccan English,Turkmen English, and Chinese English. However, the results for American English from Chinese listeners without international experiences and native listeners seemed to be more alike. Linguistic variables correlating with accentedness and comprehensibility of American English showed a mixed profile. Qualitative data provided more variant elaborations on the pronunciations and language uses of the speakers.展开更多
Listening ability constitutes an important part of a language learner＇s communicative language competence. This universal agreement necessitates an inclusion of a listening sub-test in any English proficiency test ai...Listening ability constitutes an important part of a language learner＇s communicative language competence. This universal agreement necessitates an inclusion of a listening sub-test in any English proficiency test aimed at evaluating the candidates＇ comprehensive competence. Being a criterion-referenced proficiency test, both TEM4 and TEM8 （Test for English Majors： Band 4/8） contain a listening sub-test in their test battery. In this case, improving the authenticity of the listening sub-tests in TEM will no doubt be a contributory factor in improving the authenticity of the whole test. Based on the analyses of the current listening sub-tests used in TEM, the author concludes that there exists some inauthenticity in the test tasks. One source of the inauthenticity results from the input and the other from the test tasks which seem to be stereotyped in the current tests. In order to solve these two problems, the author suggests that major English varieties and limited-constructed-response question types be included in the TEM sub-tests so as to improve the authenticity of the tests and the accuracy of assessment.展开更多
Sermon as a religious discourse thrives on the use of prosodic features which give extra information to enhance understanding of utterances in oral discourse. This paper investigates the prosodic innovations that mani...Sermon as a religious discourse thrives on the use of prosodic features which give extra information to enhance understanding of utterances in oral discourse. This paper investigates the prosodic innovations that manifest in the sermons of selected Pentecostal pastors in Southwest Nigeria. It also identifies some prosodic features in the selected sermons and relates them to their themes. Data was sourced from one sermon-VCD tape each by Pastors Kumuyi(Inf-Kum), Adeboye(Inf-Adeb) and Bishop Oyedepo(Inf-Oyed). The tapes were played back to extract some prosodic features in the sermons;these were analyzed using the pitch extraction software, PRAAT. Analyses of the data reveal that preachers put extra prosodic force on some words in order to emphasize the focus of their messages. But while Inf-Oyed and Inf-Adeb use higher pitch for accented words and lower pitch for non-accented, Inf-Kum uses the same pitch of voice for both. Additionally, the subjects’ vowel length(SV-L) rendition appeared longer than what obtains in native English. Moreover, there are specific prosodic features characterizing each preacher’s doctrinal persuasions: Inf-Oyed deploys emphatic stress with enthusiastic voice;Info-Kum uses a relatively same level of voice pitch while Info-Adeb’s renditions are generally slower in tempo. The paper concludes that Nigerian Pentecostal sermons are replete with prosodic features deployed for achieving thematization of messages and doctrinal identity construction.展开更多
文摘The present study examines accentedness, comprehensibility, and intelligibility of American English, Moroccan English, Turkmen English, and Chinese English, from the perspectives of three groups of listeners: native speakers of English and Chinese speakers of English with or without international experiences. Of the 145 listeners, 38 had face-to-face interviews. These listener groups were asked to listen to the recordings of the four English varieties and fill in a cloze test.Results indicated that the three listener groups differed significantly in rating comprehensibility of American English, Moroccan English and Chinese English but they did not give Turkmen English statistically different ratings;there were no significant differences in accentedness ratings except for Chinese English;and there were significant differences in the intelligibility scores of the four English varieties. In addition, with respect to seven linguistic variables-speed, clarity, intonation,smoothness and fluency, vocal intensity, pause, vocabulary and grammar, there were significant differences in three listener groups’ rating of six variables in American English except the one of“speed”. By contrast, Chinese English received significantly different ratings only in “proper speed”. No differences were found in the ratings for Moroccan English and Turkmen English.Finally, unlike Chinese listeners without international experiences, native listeners and Chinese listeners with international experiences shared some similarities in correlations between the ratings of accentedness and comprehensibility and those of linguistic variables on Moroccan English,Turkmen English, and Chinese English. However, the results for American English from Chinese listeners without international experiences and native listeners seemed to be more alike. Linguistic variables correlating with accentedness and comprehensibility of American English showed a mixed profile. Qualitative data provided more variant elaborations on the pronunciations and language uses of the speakers.
文摘Listening ability constitutes an important part of a language learner＇s communicative language competence. This universal agreement necessitates an inclusion of a listening sub-test in any English proficiency test aimed at evaluating the candidates＇ comprehensive competence. Being a criterion-referenced proficiency test, both TEM4 and TEM8 （Test for English Majors： Band 4/8） contain a listening sub-test in their test battery. In this case, improving the authenticity of the listening sub-tests in TEM will no doubt be a contributory factor in improving the authenticity of the whole test. Based on the analyses of the current listening sub-tests used in TEM, the author concludes that there exists some inauthenticity in the test tasks. One source of the inauthenticity results from the input and the other from the test tasks which seem to be stereotyped in the current tests. In order to solve these two problems, the author suggests that major English varieties and limited-constructed-response question types be included in the TEM sub-tests so as to improve the authenticity of the tests and the accuracy of assessment.
文摘Sermon as a religious discourse thrives on the use of prosodic features which give extra information to enhance understanding of utterances in oral discourse. This paper investigates the prosodic innovations that manifest in the sermons of selected Pentecostal pastors in Southwest Nigeria. It also identifies some prosodic features in the selected sermons and relates them to their themes. Data was sourced from one sermon-VCD tape each by Pastors Kumuyi(Inf-Kum), Adeboye(Inf-Adeb) and Bishop Oyedepo(Inf-Oyed). The tapes were played back to extract some prosodic features in the sermons;these were analyzed using the pitch extraction software, PRAAT. Analyses of the data reveal that preachers put extra prosodic force on some words in order to emphasize the focus of their messages. But while Inf-Oyed and Inf-Adeb use higher pitch for accented words and lower pitch for non-accented, Inf-Kum uses the same pitch of voice for both. Additionally, the subjects’ vowel length(SV-L) rendition appeared longer than what obtains in native English. Moreover, there are specific prosodic features characterizing each preacher’s doctrinal persuasions: Inf-Oyed deploys emphatic stress with enthusiastic voice;Info-Kum uses a relatively same level of voice pitch while Info-Adeb’s renditions are generally slower in tempo. The paper concludes that Nigerian Pentecostal sermons are replete with prosodic features deployed for achieving thematization of messages and doctrinal identity construction.
