2007/04/18

Flege, J. E., Murro, M. J., Mackay, I. R. A. (1995). Factors affecting strength of perceived foreign accent in a second language. Journal of the Acoustic Society of America, 97(5), 3125–3134.

Presentation: Angela
Summary: Sarah

In this study, factors that influenced the degree of foreign accents in second languages were examined. Specifically, the authors looked into the relation between the speakers’ age of learning (AOL) and the heaviness of their accents. Subjects were 240 native Italian speakers who had begun learning English ranging from the age of 3 to 23. Their utterance of five English sentences were recorded and then rated by native speakers of English. Results showed that generally, the younger the speakers began to learn English, the less heavy their accents were. However, in contrast to the previous assumption that the maximum accent-free age is the end of critical period, some subjects who learned English as young as 3 years old were judged to have accents, and some of those who started learning as late as 15 were judged to be native-like. In addition, females were more accent-free if the AOL was less than 12; on the other hand, if the AOL was over 12, males were more native-like. In search for other possible factors, the authors conducted a questionnaire study. It was found that although there was a gender difference, the use of English in different occasions would overall influence the degree of accents for both males and females. To sum up, AOL was the most robust factor affecting L2 speakers’ foreign accents. Nevertheless, to further understand this issue, other factors should be taken into consideration as well.