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Perceptual learning of systematic variation in Malaysian English among Libyan EFL learners


Citation

Salheen, Dalal Alfadhil Attaher and Yap, Ngee Thai and Mohamad Ali, Afida and Nimehchisalem, Vahid (2019) Perceptual learning of systematic variation in Malaysian English among Libyan EFL learners. Journal of Language and Communication, 6 (1). pp. 57-68. ISSN 2289-649X; ESSN: 2637-0875

Abstract

With the ever-increasing population of non-native speakers (NNS) of English around the world, encountering foreign-accented speech (FAS) has become frequent and inevitable, even in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching and learning context as more and more non-native English teachers are trained and recruited around the world. This study set out to examine the nature and extent of Libyan EFL learners’ perception of Malaysian-accented English as Malaysia is one of the frequent postgraduate study destinations for Libyans. The study also attempts to examine the effect of exposure to Malaysian accented English in a speech intelligibility task. Libyan EFL learners received training with English sentences produced by fifteen Malaysian English speakers for five consecutive days. Sixteen undergraduate students recruited from a public university in Libya completed two intelligibility tasks; one as the pretest and the other as the post-test. The task involved listening to a list of sentences presented to them only once on the computer. While listening to the sentences, participants had to complete a cloze task with a total of 50 missing keywords. On average, the participants performed better in the post-test, as compared with the pretest. The results indicated a statistically significant difference between the pretest and the post-test, and this indicates that Libyan EFL learners could attain better speaker-independent adaptation to the Malaysian English variety when exposed to multiple speakers of the given accent during training. It is, therefore, concluded that perceptual training had a significant effect on the participants’ achievement in speech perceptual learning.


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Additional Metadata

Item Type: Article
Divisions: Faculty of Modern Language and Communication
Publisher: Universiti Putra Malaysia Press
Keywords: Accented speech; Libyan EFL learners; Malaysian English; Perceptual learning; Speech intelligibility
Depositing User: Nurul Ainie Mokhtar
Date Deposited: 22 Oct 2019 02:39
Last Modified: 22 Oct 2019 02:39
URI: http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/54089
Statistic Details: View Download Statistic

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