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Article published In:
ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics
Vol. 133/134 (2001) ► pp.185–206

Non-Foreign-Accented Speech in Adult Second Language Learners

Does it Exist and What Does it Signify?

| University of Ottawa (Canada)

The findings of this study add to the growing number of reports in which investigators claim to have located adult second language learners who, under rigorous test conditions, manage to pass as native speakers in L2. The aims of this paper were two, first, to provide a detailed account of how we tested and qualified our Anglophones as native-like speakers of French and, second, to suggest that, interesting as our data were, more questions emerge than do answers.

Seven of 18 English/French bilinguals, having acquired L2 after the age of 16, were selected by means of a pre-test interview with three Francophones as “potentially of French-speaking background.” These seven, along with three Francophone controls, recited an 81-word passage in French onto a tape-recorder. Sixty-eight native-speaking French raters, of similar dialectal background and weak in English, each heard one of four tapes with differing random roders of the 10 passages, their task being to designate each voice as “Franco-phone” or “non-Francophone.” Four of our seven English-Franch bilinguals obtained ratings statistically comparable to those of our three Francophone controls.

Published online: 1 January 2001
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/itl.133-134.01neu
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