Exploring multilingual speakers’ perspectives on their intelligibility in English

ABSTRACT

Multilingual speakers’ ability to communicate effectively and intelligibly in the language of their country of residence is crucial to their participation. This study explored multilingual speakers’ motivations for improving their intelligibility in English and their perceptions of potential barriers and facilitators to enhancing intelligibility. Participants were multilingual students and staff at 14 Australian universities. Extended response data from 137 survey responses were combined with seven semi-structured interviews, thematically analyzed using the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health as a conceptual framework, and coded using NVivo software. Three overarching themes were: motivations, barriers, and facilitators. Themes that emerged under motivations were meeting their own and others’ expectations and career aspirations. Themes that emerged under barriers to intelligibility were lack of self-awareness of reduced English intelligibility, use of ineffective strategies (e.g., fast speech rate to disguise pronunciation difficulties), language differences, lack of opportunity to practise English, participants’ perceptions of others’ negative attitudes to their English skills, and challenging conversational partners. Facilitators to intelligibility were emotional support from others, beneficial strategies (e.g., confirming listener understanding), and opportunities to practice. The results highlight the importance of supporting multilingual speakers’ efforts to improve their English intelligibility. An environment with barriers such as lack of opportunity to practise English may restrict an individuals’ performance and participation, while facilitators such as support from others may increase participation. This study will inform the understanding of speech-language pathologists engaged in intelligibility enhancement, as well as SLPs working with multilingual speakers in any context.

KEYWORDS:

• Intelligibility Enhancement
• multilingual
• participation
• English proficiency
• university students
• qualitative analysis
• accent modification
• ICF

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge The University of Newcastle Speech Pathology Program, especially Dr Sally Hewat for her foresight in establishing the Speech Intelligibility Clinic. We also acknowledge support from a University of Newcastle Teaching and Learning Project Grant in 2011 that facilitated establishing the on-campus clinic.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Helen L. Blake acknowledges funding from an Australian Government Research Training Program Stipend Scholarship.