L1 Pronunciation and Intelligibility in ELF: A Case Study

In the teaching and testing of English to speakers of other languages, native speaker pronunciation has traditionally been considered as a suitable model for ELF students. In recent years, this view has been challenged and it has been argued that a core approach is more appropriate given English’s status as an international language (Jenkins 1998, 2000. 2002, 2007). Jenkins’ concept of LFC (Lingua Franca Core) rests on mutual intelligibility for non-native speakers as opposed to intelligibility for some hypothetical native speaker of so-called standard variety. This assumes a common ground of certain features taken from varieties of ELF but also raises the interesting question of what precise part is played by features of the L1 of each participant in the discourse plays: whether they contribute or ‘interfere’ with the process, and equally important what ELF speakers’ attitudes are to such NNS pronunciations in particular towards that of their own L1. In this paper, we conduct a small-scale quantitative analysis based a questionnaire-based survey of 174 learners of English of various L1 (mainly Albanian, German and Italian) and two separate comparison groups made up of English language teachers who are asked to assess different extracts of unidentified subjects both native speaker (NS) and not (NNS) speaking English, as regards level of intelligibility, pronunciation and fluency (accepting that this latter is largely an intuitive concept that defies a simple objective definition.) The data from the control groups was collected as part of another research project (see Christiansen 2012, this volume). The object of the questionnaire is to identify which samples of English, questionnaire respondents find easier to understand and how far familiarity (e.g. pronunciation influenced by shared L1) affects their perceptions.