The Effect of Non-native Accent on Iranian EFL Learners’ Listening Comprehension, Focusing on Persian Accent of English

• DOI: 10.4304/jltr.3.5.967-972
• Publication Date: 2012-09-04T06:24:06Z
• Authors: Ahmad Moinzadeh; Omid Rezaei; Salman Dezhara
• Keywords: 4. Education; 0602 languages and literature; 06 humanities and the arts

The fundamental purpose of the present paper is to investigate the effect of non-native accent on Iranian EFL learners' listening comprehension. Participants of the study were 44 Iranian EFL learners who were homogenized by OPT (Oxford Placement Test), and then assigned to two experimental groups consisting 22 students. One of the groups listened to a lecture with American accent, and the other one listened to the same lecture which was read by the researcher, a fluent Persian speaker of English. After the students' answering to ten comprehension questions based on the lecture, the scores were analyzed and a sample independent was run. The result showed that the performance of the students in the group which listened to non-native accent (Persian) was significantly better. The result suggested that non-native accent (the accent of the mother tongue of the learners) be beneficial to learners and facilitate their comprehension.