DICTATION AS A MEASURE OF MUTUAL INTELLIGIBILITY: A PILOT STUDY

An experiment using dictation in foreign and native accents of English suggests that this is a fruitful device for the study of individual and group differences affecting mutual intelligibility. Prior listener-experience with the voice of the speaker appears to be a prominent factor in intelligibility, indicating that accommodation to the speaker over time is a crucial variable, and that language teachers are apt to be the poorest judges of their students’ability to communicate with strangers. A combination of age, education, and ESL teaching experience seems to increase ability to comprehend unfamiliar speakers. Bilingual Spanish-English listeners have an advantage in decoding Spanish-accented English, while American Indians scored below ESL students in ability to decode a heavy Spanish accent. Neither clear nor noise-contaminated tapes showed consistent superiority in maximizing discrimination among listener groups.