Non-foreign-accented speech in adult second language learners: does it exist and what does it signify?

• Autores: Gerald G. Neufeld
• Localización: ITL International Journal of Applied Linguistics, ISSN 0019-0810, ISSN-e 1783-1490, Nº. 133-134, 2001, págs. 185-206
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The findings of this study add to the growing number of reports in which investigators claim to have located adult second language learners who, under rigorous test conditions, manage to pass as native speakers in L2. The aims of this paper were two, first, to provide a detailed account of how we tested and qualified our Anglophones as native-like speakers of French and, second, to suggest that, interesting as our data were, more questions emerge than do answers. Seven of 18 English/French bilinguals, having acquired L2 after the age of 16, were selected by means of a pre-test interview with three Francophones as potentially of French-speaking background. These seven, along with three Francophone controls, recited an 81-word passage in French onto a tape-recorder. Sixty-eight nativespeaking French raters, of similar dialectal background and weak in English, each heard one of four tapes with differing random orders of the 10 passages, their task being to designate each voice as Francophone or non-Francophone. Four of our seven English-French bilinguals obtained ratings statistically comparable to those of our three Francophone controls.