| Abstract: |
Research on second language acquiition has long been interested in analyzing different learning contexts that language learners experience when trying to improve their target languages (Collentine & Freed 2004) such as formal instruction (FI), study abroad (SA), and, more recently, different types of immersion (Pérez-Vidal 2017). The aim of the present study is to examine two of these contexts, SA and FI at home, in the case of English as a foreign language adolescent learners having Catalan and Spanish as their first languages, an age band which has received comparatively less attention than others (but see Llanes 2012; Llanes & Muñoz 2013). We focus on the learners' foreign accent and comprehensibility, as judged by a group of non-native listeners, with the objective of assessing progress and the relationship between both dimensions, following Trofimovich & Isaacs (2012). Most centrally, we are interested in analyzing the aspects of each speech imension of focus which have reportedly affected the judges' ratings. In order to do that, speech samples were collected longitudinally for the SA (N = 25) and the FI (N = 31) groups of learners, respectively, with a pre-test/post-test design. Listeners were asked to rate and report on the aspects which affected their ratings. Our results reveal that the aspect which most influenced the judges was pronunciation. This places pronunciation at the center of the search for better practices in instructed second language acquisition in line with recently published studies (Van Loon 2002; Darcy et al. 2012; Gordon & Darcy 2012; Saito & Lyster 2012; Grant 2014). |
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