A Study on the Relation Between Intelligibility and Attitudes

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The purpose of this paper is to examine the intelligibility and attitude towards four English varieties to Korean-speaking learners (KSLs) of English, who have been exposed mainly to General American (or Korean-accented English) in their English language learning classrooms throughout the primary and secondary schools. A total of 105 Korean undergraduate students listened to a recording in one of the four accents (General American, British, Australian, and Korean-accented English) and completed an intelligibility test followed by a questionnaire survey on attitudes. Analysis revealed that British English was most intelligible to KSLs among four varieties whereas that of Australian was least intelligible. Attitudes toward an English variety did not exert a strong force that may contribute to the level of intelligibility. The findings also showed at which phonological features identified KSLs were most sensitive to intelligibility differences. We conclude that the more exposed English variety to KSLs, the more favorable attitudes can be formed, but is not necessarily intelligible. What the findings demonstrate is that attitudes are not the best explanation of intelligibility and call for improvement in ways of directing KSLs’ attention to some phonological features in a learnability perspective.

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