Open AccessReexamining L2 accent: How much can personality explain?
Author(s) -
Germán Zárate–Sández
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
ilha do desterro
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2175-8026
pISSN - 0101-4846
DOI - 10.5007/2175-8026.2017v70n3p227
Subject(s) - stress (linguistics) , extraversion and introversion , personality , neuroticism , psychology , pronunciation , task (project management) , variance (accounting) , big five personality traits , linguistics , social psychology , philosophy , business , accounting , management , economics
Previous studies have shown that learners’ individual differences (e.g., motivation, age) can impact second language learners’ pronunciation. This study focused on one individual difference that has received relatively little attention, namely personality, and sought to determine to what extent personality accounts for learners’ L2 accent during quasispontaneous and unplanned speech. Fifty-one English-speaking learners of Spanish performed a speaking task that was scored for degree of L2 accentedness. Results revealed that personality explained a considerable portion of the variance, and that extraversion and neuroticism were significant predictors of L2 accent