Amanda Huensch
University of Pittsburgh, Linguistics, Faculty Member
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This study investigated the relationship among intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness in the speech of second language learners of Spanish of varying proficiency in instructed contexts. It conceptually replicated studies by... more
This study investigated the relationship among intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness in the speech of second language learners of Spanish of varying proficiency in instructed contexts. It conceptually replicated studies by Munro and Derwing (1995a) and Derwing and Munro (1997), who found partial independence among the three speech dimensions but also evidence that proficiency may mediate the relationship between linguistic features of stimuli (e.g., phonemic and grammatical error rates) and speech dimensions. Speech data from 42 second language learners of Spanish recruited from two different universities were elicited via a semispontaneous speaking task: the picture‐based narration from the initial study. Amazon Mechanical Turk was used to recruit 80 native Spanish listeners to transcribe and rate extracted utterances. The utterances were coded for grammatical and phonemic errors, goodness of prosody, and speaking rate. Analyses included mixed‐effects models that allowed estimation of individual variation across facets of the data, particularly those of listeners.
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In this report, we reviewed Open Scholarship in Applied Linguistics: What, Why, and How, a two-day online symposium held in June 2022. The symposium was the inaugural event of Open Applied Linguistics, a newly established AILA research... more
In this report, we reviewed Open Scholarship in Applied Linguistics: What, Why, and How, a two-day online symposium held in June 2022. The symposium was the inaugural event of Open Applied Linguistics, a newly established AILA research network dedicated to the promotion of open scholarship in applied linguistics. We started with the background against which Open Applied Linguistics was founded and went on to introduce our understanding of open scholarship. We then summarised and reviewed selected talks and panels from the symposium, ranging from replication and registered reports to the Postprint Pledge. A common thread across our symposium is an ethos of openness, not merely in terms of research practices, but also in the open acknowledgement of and engagement with the many tensions and challenges regarding open scholarship in applied linguistics, from epistemological and cultural to psychological and practical. This, we believe, is the ethos that can truly build us up as a field. ...
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This study investigated the effects of L2 pronunciation instruction on speech intelligibility and fluency, the relationship between intelligibility and fluency, and the extent to which utterance fluency can predict perceived fluency.... more
This study investigated the effects of L2 pronunciation instruction on speech intelligibility and fluency, the relationship between intelligibility and fluency, and the extent to which utterance fluency can predict perceived fluency. Participants were 30 beginning adult EFL learners who received either segmental or suprasegmental instruction. Oral data included monologues recorded at the beginning and end of an 8-week course. Speech segments were transcribed for intelligibility and rated on a 1000-point scale for fluency by 11 native speakers. They were also coded and analyzed for transcription errors and utterance fluency measures. Quantitative analyses did not reveal significant changes in intelligibility or perceived fluency as the result of instruction. However, the suprasegmental group seemed to show an upward trend in speech rate, which was found to strongly predict perceived fluency. The findings further our understanding of the effectiveness of pronunciation instruction base...
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ABSTRACTThis study examined the extent to which first language (L1) fluency behavior, cross-linguistic differences, and proficiency can predict second language (L2) fluency behavior over time. English L1 Spanish (n= 24) and French (n= 25)... more
ABSTRACTThis study examined the extent to which first language (L1) fluency behavior, cross-linguistic differences, and proficiency can predict second language (L2) fluency behavior over time. English L1 Spanish (n= 24) and French (n= 25) majors completed a picture-based oral narrative in the L2 before and after 5 months residing abroad and later in the L1 after returning home. Data were coded for seven measures of speed, breakdown, and repair fluency. The results from multiple regressions indicated that L1 fluency behavior, cross-linguistic differences, and proficiency differentially contributed to explaining L2 fluency behavior prior to and during immersion. These findings suggest that when investigating L1–L2 fluency relationships considerations of mitigating factors such as cross-linguistic differences are necessary, and it is worthwhile to focus on how the contributions of these factors shift during development.
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Perceptual training can lead to improvements in production which generalize to new words and talkers. This study investigated the effects of perceptual training on productions in larger discourse contexts of continuous speech, and... more
Perceptual training can lead to improvements in production which generalize to new words and talkers. This study investigated the effects of perceptual training on productions in larger discourse contexts of continuous speech, and additionally examined whether training generalized to a new syllable structure and across grammatical domains. Participants included Korean L2 learners of English in a pretest-training-posttest design. An experimental group completed perceptual training on singleton coda palatals, and a control group completed training on an unrelated target. Results indicated that perceptual training on singleton coda palatals was successful in significantly improving learners’ productions in continuous speech. Learners were able to generalize production improvements to a new syllable structure (simple vs. complex coda), but not across grammatical domains (-ed morphemes). These findings provide further support for the use of perceptual training in pronunciation classrooms...
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This report examines the potential impacts of task and proficiency on listener judgments of intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness in L2 Spanish. This study extends Huensch and Nagle [Language Learning, 71, 626–668, (2021)],... more
This report examines the potential impacts of task and proficiency on listener judgments of intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness in L2 Spanish. This study extends Huensch and Nagle [Language Learning, 71, 626–668, (2021)], who explored the partial independence among the global speech dimensions for speech samples taken from a picture narrative task. Given that the type of speaking task used to elicit speech samples has been shown to impact the strength of the linguistic features contributing to the global speech dimensions and to explore the impact of task on the relationships among the dimensions, the current study followed the same procedure as Huensch and Nagle but employed a task in which participants responded to a prompt based on NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements. The speech samples were elicited from instructed L2 Spanish learners of varying proficiency (n = 42) and were rated by a group of native-speaking Spanish listeners (n = 80) using Amazon Mechanical Turk. ...
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This IPA illustration was written jointly by the seven members of the Fall 2008 Field Methods class at the University of Illinois and revised by the first author. It presents the consonants and vowels of Q’anjob’al, borrowed sounds,... more
This IPA illustration was written jointly by the seven members of the Fall 2008 Field Methods class at the University of Illinois and revised by the first author. It presents the consonants and vowels of Q’anjob’al, borrowed sounds, syllable structure, suprasegmentals, allophonic variation, and phonemic and phonetic transcriptions of the North Wind and the Sun story. All data is drawn from work sessions with a single Q’anjob’al speaker from Santa Eulalia, Guatemala. 1 Santa Eulalia is considered one of the more conservative areas linguistically (Raymundo et al., 2005); however, we found some phonetic changes associated with the more novel areas.
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This study investigated relationships among intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness in the speech of L2 learners of Spanish who completed a prompted response speaking task. Thirty native Spanish listeners from Spain were... more
This study investigated relationships among intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness in the speech of L2 learners of Spanish who completed a prompted response speaking task. Thirty native Spanish listeners from Spain were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk to transcribe and rate extracted utterances, which were also coded for grammatical and phonemic errors, and speaking rate. Descriptively, although most utterances were intelligible, their comprehensibility and accentedness varied substantially. Mixed-effects modeling showed that comprehensibility was significantly associated with intelligibility whereas accentedness was not. Additionally, phonemic and grammatical errors were significant predictors of intelligibility and comprehensibility, but only phonemic errors were significantly related to accentedness. Overall, phonemic errors displayed a stronger negative association with the listener-based dimensions than grammatical errors. These findings suggest that Engl...
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This conversation analytic paper investigates how speakers self-position or are other-positioned as members of a certain social group (e.g., competent speakers of a language) through other-initiated repair. Findings illustrate the... more
This conversation analytic paper investigates how speakers self-position or are other-positioned as members of a certain social group (e.g., competent speakers of a language) through other-initiated repair. Findings illustrate the complexity of linguistic membership categories by demonstrating that they continually shift depending on local interactional goals and documenting how shifts are accomplished. The different levels and types of linguistic and cultural knowledge that are invoked in instances of repair on specific lexical items demonstrate the complexity of linguistic membership categorization, and this indicates a need to problematize the use of a priori and overly-vague labels like ‘non-native speaker’. Findings contribute to our understanding of the functions of other-initiated repair and the mechanisms of co-constructing membership (categorization) and thus social identity in interaction. They also raise questions about the relationship between amounts and types of knowle...
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This study explored the attrition / maintenance of second language (L2) proficiency by examining longitudinally the oral skills of a group of L2 French and L2 Spanish participants (n = 33) four years after study abroad, and three years... more
This study explored the attrition / maintenance of second language (L2) proficiency by examining longitudinally the oral skills of a group of L2 French and L2 Spanish participants (n = 33) four years after study abroad, and three years after completing an undergraduate degree in languages. Multiple regressions were conducted to determine the extent to which language contact / use and attained proficiency at the end of study abroad could predict changes in fluency and oral proficiency. Results demonstrated that those variables that improved significantly during study abroad (e.g., speech rate) were maintained four years later. The amount of target language contact / use played a role in maintenance of aspects of fluency such as speech rate and frequency of silent pauses, whereas proficiency attained at the end of study abroad played a role in the use of corrections. Both language contact / use and proficiency attained are important variables in the long-term maintenance of overall pr...
The goal of this work was to explore the training, classroom practices, and beliefs related to pronunciation of instructors of languages other than English. While several investigations of this type have been conducted in English as a... more
The goal of this work was to explore the training, classroom practices, and beliefs related to pronunciation of instructors of languages other than English. While several investigations of this type have been conducted in English as a second/foreign language contexts, very little is known about the beliefs and practices of teachers of languages other than English. It is unknown whether recent shifts to focusing on intelligibility, as advocated by some pronunciation scholars, are borne out in foreign language classrooms. To fill this gap, instructors of Spanish ( n = 127), French ( n = 89), and German ( n = 80) teaching basic language courses (i.e. the first four semesters) at 28 large (e.g. more than 15,000 students), public universities in the United States completed an online survey reporting on their training, classroom practices, and beliefs. Similar to ESL/EFL contexts, the results indicated that instructors believe it is important to incorporate pronunciation in class and that...
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This study examined the extent to which L1 fluency behavior, cross-linguistic differences, and proficiency can predict L2 fluency behavior over time. English L1 Spanish (n = 24) and French (n = 25) majors completed a picture-based oral... more
This study examined the extent to which L1 fluency behavior, cross-linguistic differences, and proficiency can predict L2 fluency behavior over time. English L1 Spanish (n = 24) and French (n = 25) majors completed a picture-based oral narrative in the L2 before and after five months residing abroad and later in the L1 after returning home. Data were coded for seven measures of speed, breakdown, and repair fluency. Results from multiple regressions indicated that L1 fluency behavior, cross-linguistic differences, and proficiency differentially contributed to explaining L2 fluency behavior prior to and during immersion. These findings suggest that when investigating L1-L2 fluency relationships considerations of mitigating factors such as cross-linguistic differences are necessary, and it is worthwhile to focus on how the contributions of these factors shift during development.
Research Interests:
Perceptual training can lead to improvements in production which generalize to new words and talkers. This study investigated the effects of perceptual training on productions in larger discourse contexts of continuous speech, and... more
Perceptual training can lead to improvements in production which generalize to new words and talkers. This study investigated the effects of perceptual training on productions in larger discourse contexts of continuous speech, and additionally examined whether training generalized to a new syllable structure and across grammatical domains. Participants included Korean L2 learners of English in a pretest-training-posttest design. An experimental group completed perceptual training on singleton coda palatals, and a control group completed training on an unrelated target. Results indicated that perceptual training on singleton coda palatals was successful in significantly improving learners’ productions in continuous speech. Learners were able to generalize production improvements to a new syllable structure (simple vs. complex coda), but not across grammatical domains (-ed morphemes). These findings provide further support for the use of perceptual training in pronunciation classrooms, but demonstrate some limitations to its generalizability.
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This study investigated the effect of perceptual training on second language (L2) learners’ perception and production of syllable structure, thereby shedding light on the relationship between L2 speech perception and production and on the... more
This study investigated the effect of perceptual training on second language (L2) learners’ perception and production of syllable structure, thereby shedding light on the relationship between L2 speech perception and production and on the nature of stored representations. Korean L2 learners of English completed perceptual training on palatal codas in a pretest-post-test design. We compared the effects of training on improvements in perception and production for trained and new words and talkers. A control group who completed an unrelated perceptual training was included for comparison. Results indicated that learners who received perceptual training on palatal codas outperformed those who did not in perception and production tasks and generalized learning to new words and new talkers. Yet perception improvements were not directly linked to production improvements. The finding that perceptual training improved production and allowed for generalizability to new words and talkers in both perception and production provides evidence that L2 perception and production systems are linked. However, the lack of a one-to-one relationship between perception and production improvements suggests that the representations underlying L2 speech perception and production may be distinct.
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This IPA illustration was written jointly by the seven members of the Fall 2008 Field Methods class at the University of Illinois and revised by the first author. It presents the consonants and vowels of Q’anjob’al, borrowed sounds,... more
This IPA illustration was written jointly by the seven members of the Fall 2008 Field Methods class at the University of Illinois and revised by the first author. It presents the consonants and vowels of Q’anjob’al, borrowed sounds, syllable structure, suprasegmentals, allophonic variation, and phonemic and phonetic transcriptions of the North Wind and the Sun story. All data is drawn from work sessions with a single Q’anjob’al speaker from Santa Eulalia, Guatemala. Santa Eulalia is considered one of the more conservative areas linguistically (Raymundo et al., 2005); however, we found some phonetic changes associated with the more novel areas. published or submitted for publication is peer reviewed
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In the last decade, interest in L2 pronunciation research and pedagogy has steadily gained momentum; yet, less attention has been paid to the area of assessing pronunciation either separately or as part of the larger construct of speaking... more
In the last decade, interest in L2 pronunciation research and pedagogy has steadily gained momentum; yet, less attention has been paid to the area of assessing pronunciation either separately or as part of the larger construct of speaking ability. Isaacs’ (2014) chapter on assessing pronunciation bemoans this fact while also noting how assessment should and could reflect recent advances in theory and research, such as the paradigm shift from accentedness to intelligibility (Levis, 2005) and findings related to intelligibility (e.g., Munro & Derwing, 2006).
In this paper, the researchers evaluate and revise an existing pronunciation diagnostic test based on a review of pronunciation assessment literature. Some modifications of the current test included the addition of a section testing aural perception, changing the free speech section from a self-introduction to an interview, and revising the targeted segmental features based on principled selection criteria. While the focus of this paper is on a test of English pronunciation within the context of international teaching assistant training, the authors believe the insights gained will be valuable and relevant for test development in other contexts as well as for other languages.
In this paper, the researchers evaluate and revise an existing pronunciation diagnostic test based on a review of pronunciation assessment literature. Some modifications of the current test included the addition of a section testing aural perception, changing the free speech section from a self-introduction to an interview, and revising the targeted segmental features based on principled selection criteria. While the focus of this paper is on a test of English pronunciation within the context of international teaching assistant training, the authors believe the insights gained will be valuable and relevant for test development in other contexts as well as for other languages.
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... sample speech files. Twelve of the speech files were taken from The Official Guide to the New TOEFL iBT published by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) (2006), and fifteen were sample files from the data-base in this study. ...
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This article discusses a case study on an item writing process that reflects on our practical experience in an item development project. The purpose of the article is to share our lessons from the experience aiming to demystify item... more
This article discusses a case study on an item writing process that reflects on our practical experience in an item development project. The purpose of the article is to share our lessons from the experience aiming to demystify item writing process. The study investigated three issues that naturally emerged during the project: how item writers use test specifications in their
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... Jiyoung Kim a * , Youngshin Chi a , Amanda Huensch a , Heesung Jun b , Hongli Li c & Vanessa Roullion a pages 160-174. ... View all references), and item construction guidelines (Alderson,Clapham, & Wall, 19951.... more
... Jiyoung Kim a * , Youngshin Chi a , Amanda Huensch a , Heesung Jun b , Hongli Li c & Vanessa Roullion a pages 160-174. ... View all references), and item construction guidelines (Alderson,Clapham, & Wall, 19951. Alderson, JC, Clapham, C. and Wall, D. 1995. ...