影響台灣學生口語清晰度之因素

Factors Affecting Chinese EFL Learners' Intelligibility

For ESL/EFL learners whose L1 is syllable-timed like Chinese and Japanese, knowledge of the stress-timed nature and rhythm of English helps to train the bottom-up skill of prosodic speech (Celce-Murcia, Brinton, & Goodwin, 2002; Melenca, 2001). While the learners tend to believe that they are always better understood when every syllable is clearly pronounced, Melenca (2001) finds that this 'staccato rhythm' directly leads to fluency and intelligibility problems. The issue of fluency encompasses suprasegmental factors like rhythm and intonation. Rhythmic production through application of reduced forms is a bottom-up skill worthy of learning for students to attain better intelligibility. To investigate the factors affecting Chinese EFL learners' intelligibility, the present study recruited 25 sophomore English majors, who have passed intermediate GEPT, a standardized English proficiency test launched by Language Training and Testing Center in Taiwan. The subjects were required to orally produce a 24-sentence self-developed reading text. The reading text is composed of six types of reduced forms, linking, flapping, elision, h-deletion, contraction, and palatalization. The rating was given on a 9-point scale by two experienced pronunciation instructors, a native speaker and a non-native speaker. Raters listened to each utterance twice and assigned a rating from 1 (not comprehensible at all) to 9 (highly comprehensible), disregarding nativelikeness. With inter-rater reliability of 0.823, the scoring criteria encompass the 7 features proposed by Warren, Elgort, and Crabbe (2009) including consonants, vowels, word stress, sentence stress, rhythm, intonation, and rate. The results of the present study verified the top four affecting factors as sentence stress, vowels, intonation and rhythm.對於母語為中文或日文的ESL／EFL學習者而言，了解英語的音節特質與節奏為訓練學生流暢口語能力之利器（Ce1ce-Murcia，Brinton，＆ Goodwin，2002；Melenca，2001）。當學習者過度清晰的發出每個音節以確保溝通無礙時，這種“頓式節奏”反而產生流利度與理解度的問題（Melenca，2001）。流利度涵蓋超音段因素，如節奏與語調。藉由縮減音的運用，強化說話的節奏感，進而提升清晰度是一個值得重視的基礎技巧。為了解影響台灣英語學習者說話清晰度之因素，本研究團隊以25位英語系已通過全民英檢中級之大二學生為研究對象；並以自行研發之朗讀文章作為測驗工具。此文本包含子音子音連音（C-C linking）、舌拍音（flapping）、省略音（elision）、h音省略（h-deletion）、減化音（contraction）、及顎化音（palatalization）六種縮減音類型，。學習者的口說語料由兩位資深發音教學講師，中師外師各一名，以9分量表進行評分。每份語料由評分者聽兩次給予最低1分（完全無法理解）至最高9分（可以完全理解）之評分。評分者信度達.823。本研究採用Warren、Elgort及Crabbe（2009）所提出，包括子音、母音、單字重音、句子重音、節奏、語調、及速度七個項目之評分標準。研究結果顯示影響台灣學生口語清晰度之四項主要因素依序為句子重音、母音、語調、及節奏。