论文总字数：36451字

摘 要

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Need for the study 1

1.2 Research purpose 2

2 Literature review 3

2.1 Theoretical foundations 3

2.1.1 The phonetic differences between British and American accents 3

2.1.1 .1Differences of the vowels 3

2.1.1.2Differences of the consonants 4

2.1.2 The bottom-up and top-down processes 5

2.2 Empirical studies on the relationship 6

2.2.1 Studied on the effects of accents and English listening comprehension 6

2.2.2 Studies on the effects of difficulty levels on English listening comprehension 7

2.3 Problems in the previous studies 7

3. Methodology 8

3.1 Research question 8

3.2 Listening material 8

3.3 Data collection and scoring method 9

3.4 Data analysis 10

4. Results and Discussion 11

4.1 Results 11

4.1.1 Results of accents and difficulty levels 11

4.1.2 Results of a Mixed ANOVA for listening comprehension 12

4.2 Discussions 13

4.2.1 Main effect of American and British accents on English listening comprehension 13

4.2.2 Main effect of difficulty levels on English listening comprehension 13

4.2.3 Interaction effects among American and British accents and difficulty levels on listening comprehension 14

5.Conclusion 15

5.1 Major findings of the study 15

5.2 Implications 15

5.2.1 Theoretical implications 15

5.2.2 Pedagogical implications 16

5.3 Limitations and suggestions for future research 16

References 18

Acknowledgements

This paper is not only the final task but also one of the most important things during my college study . It is an outcome of devotion, help and encouragement. Here I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere thanks to those who selflessly do me a lot of favors in the completion of this paper.

Firstly, the people help me most is my supervisor. I would like to give my deepest gratitude to her, Professor Lu Junhua. She has chosen the topic for us and given us some references to let us know how did other researchers carry out experiments. when our members didn’t know how to start our paper. In addition, Professor Lu Junhua has helped us analyze data with the software and given us many precious suggestions when we were writing our paper. Without her endless patience, precise manner and generous support, It would be impossible for me to finish this paper.

What’s more, I would like to thank all other professors who imported me valuable knowledge, rich concerns and serious attitudes towards learning. Without their unselfish dedication could I have a rich university life. They are my good teachers and helpful friends. When I am writing my paper, their conscientious attitudes towards research have inspired me. They indirectly has helped lot in my paper.

Last but not the least, our team members are very united and I want to express my gratitude to them. At the beginning of our research, we have divided our work and collected our data. Unity and cooperation have helped us finish our experiments. We also help others a lot during the writing and revision of our paper and learn from others.

Abstract

This study investigates the differences between American and British accents and difficulty levels on English listening comprehension. Three questions are aimed to answer.

1.Is there any main effect of American and British accents on English listening comprehension?

2. Is there any main effect of difficulty levels on English listening comprehension?

3. Are there any interaction effects among American and British accents and difficulty levels on English listening comprehension?

The experiment was administered to 110 freshmen majoring in Civil Engineering, coming from two intact classes of the same level in Nanjing Tech University. They were divided into two groups according to their class with 56 students in each group, named as group 1 and group 2. Firstly, we selected ten passages from CET-6 by “Readability”. Then a pre-test was conducted and four listening materials were selected. Passage one and passage two are easy listening materials and passage three and passage four are difficult listening materials. Meanwhile, there is significant difference between easy listening materials and difficult listening materials. Group 1 listened to materials recorded by American accent and group 2 listened to materials recorded by British accent. The test was finished at the end of the semester. 110 papers were collected in the listening tests finally.

The mixed ANOVA of spss 21.0 was conducted with the data in this thesis. The three major findings are as follows:

1.There is main effect of American and British accents on listening comprehension. It indicates that subjects in our experiment have better performance with British accent.

2.There is main effect of difficulty levels on English listening comprehension. In addition, participants perform better with easy listening materials.

3. There is no interaction effects among American and British accents and difficulty levels on English listening comprehension, which illustrates that neither American nor British accents, it will not change difficulty levels to influence on English listening comprehension.

Therefore, it is suggested that we should pay more attention to American accent while not ignoring British accent. What’s more, it is helpful to control the difficulty levels in English listening tests and practices.

Key words: American accent; British accent; difficulty levels; listening comprehension

中文摘要

本文旨在研究英美口音和听力难度对英语听力理解的影响。我们的目的是解决以下三个问题：

1. 英美口音对英语听力理解是否有主效应？

2. 听力难度对英语听力理解是否有主效应？

3. 英美口音和听力难度对英语听力理解是否有交互影响？

实验对象是来自南京工业大学土木专业大一的110名学生，人数相等的两个自然班级分为组一和组二。根据Readability分析，从CET6中选出十篇听力材料，再通过预测试，进一步从中筛选出四篇听力材料。文章一和文章二属于简单材料，文章三和文章四属于较难材料，且简单材料和较难材料之间存在显著差异。组一听的听力材料是美国口音录制的，组二听的听力材料是英国口音录制的。测验在他们上半学期的期末考试中完成。最终我们共回收了110份听力试卷。

本研究通过SPSS 21中的混合方差分析，得出以下结论：

1. 英美口音对英语听力理解有主效应。结果表明，英音受试者的听力理解高于美英受试者。
2. 不同听力难度对英语听力理解有主效应。根据测试结果，简单材料的受试者表现优于较难材料的受试者。
3. 英美口音和听力难度对英语听力理解没有交互影响。无论是英音还是美音，都与听力材料的难度没有关系。

因此，建议在二语听力教学中，不忽视英音教学的前提下，增加对美音的培养。同时，这也能帮助我们控制英语听力测试和练习的难度。

关键词：美音 英音 难度 听力理解

1 Introduction

Listening comprehension has played a significant role in second language acquisition because it is essential in communication. Meanwhile, our study and living environments are becoming more and more internationalized. We may encounter many foreigners with different accents in our work. Meanwhile, we may listen to materials with different difficulty levels in our study. As a result, we want to explore the relations between accents and difficulty levels and English listening comprehension. In this study, we take American and British accents for example, which appear in our life most frequently. The aim of our research is to make our listening comprehension better.

1.1 Need for the study

In the process of listening research, we have found out many factors influencing on listening comprehension. However, there is no clear-out answer to the relations between accents, difficulty levels and English listening comprehension. As a result, we conducted several experiments to search the relationship between accents, difficulty levels and listening comprehension so that we can apply into teaching.

In the past several decades, a lot of studies have been carried out to investigate accents and listening comprehension both at home and abroad (Li, 2009; Anderson, 1988; Zhang, 2001; Zhou, 2002), but much fewer studies have been conducted on the interrelationship between accents and listening comprehension (Barnwell,1971; Yao, 2011). More studies have been focused on the differences between English accents and American accents (Chen, 2001) and the characteristics of different accents (Zhou amp; Chen, 2008). Specifically, a lot of researchers have found out that quantitative and qualitative analyses of the effects of nonnative accents on listening comprehension. What’s more, some thesis (Peng, 2012) discusses how to define different difficulty levels of listening materials. As a result, the research needs to be carried out at particular different accents that we often use during our study so that we could improve our

listening comprehension accordingly.

In addition, this study should be undertaken because there is a bottle-neck on the improvement in our listening comprehension. Practice more and speaking more seem to fail in our improvement. Nowadays, in English teaching classroom, there is a dilemma faced with the strong burden of examinations, a lot of teachers pay more attention to reading and writing parts in exams because they occupies most scores. As a result, listening comprehension has been ignored, not only owing to its low place in exams, but also lacking an excellent teaching way. Therefore, finding out the relationships between accents and difficulty levels and listening comprehension is necessary, which can help us find a good teaching way in listening comprehension.

1.2 Research purpose

The present study is aimed to explore the effects of different accents and various difficulty levels on listening comprehension. Specifically speaking, there are three purposes in this study. Firstly, find out whether there is any main effect of American and British accents on English listening comprehension. Secondly, find out whether there is any main effect of difficulty levels on English listening comprehension. Thirdly, find out whether there is any interaction effects among American and British accents and difficulty levels on English listening comprehension.

2 Literature review

Literature is reviewed in three parts in this paper, first on the theoretical foundation，including the phonetic differences between American and British accents, the bottom-up and top-down processes, second on the empirical studies on accents and listening comprehension, and third on the problems in the previous study.

2.1 Theoretical foundations

2.1.1 The phonetic differences between British and American accents

The difference between British and American English that can affect us during listening comprehension is the speech. Therefore, the phonetic differences play an important role in our research. Here are the differences we can learn from Oxford Advanced English Dictionary (Wehmeier, 2004, p.223-226).

2.1.1 .1Differences of the vowels

In British English, the vowel [a] is replaced by [æ] in American English. For example, the word “dance”, in British English [dans], while in America English [dæns]; “bath”, [baø] in British English and [bæø] in America English; “class”, [kla:s] in British English and [klæs] in America English. Many such words in the sentence can easily occur due to the role of the mouth. For example: I can't do it. The pronunciation of “can't” in American English, due to the role of the mouth, it is confused with “can”. Listeners can not realize this point and completely reversed the meaning of the word.

In British English, the vowel [o] takes place of [a] in American English. A short [o], in British English, only pronounces only for a long [o], and the American [o] sounds [a]. A long [o] sounds back if there is a [r].

One of the biggest differences between vowels deals with the Hun vowel (inverted[e] in Phonetic writing). In British English, voiced vowels frequently occur in the number of non-repetition of the short sound [a] (eg. “about”) and the short sound [ә] (eg. “computer”). [Er]

In American English vowels rarely muddy, and sometimes short sound [I] (as sentimental, actuality), and [u] (eg. “wust”), and even short sound of [oo] (eg: “hooker”) adopted the muddy vowel.

2.1.1.2Differences of the consonants

In American English, [r] in all cases should be pronounced, while in British English, [r] is generally not pronounced before a vowel. For example, the phrase “clear animosity”, British English, will read separately, while American English would read wholly.

In American English, when [t] and [d] are caught in the middle of vowels, they pronounce with a slight vibration. Consonant [t] in American English is in pronunciation and sometimes very similar to the [d]. Such as “writer”[’raider] and “rider” [’raider], “latter” [’læder] and “ladder” ['læder], sound is the same.

The two countries to handle the stress are quite different. British users are accustomed to the word's main stress on the various post-syllable, while American users will prefer to be placed in front of the main stress syllable. In many words ended in “-ary” and “-ory” and two-syllable words ended in “-ate”, British English puts the main accent on the second syllable while American English puts the accent on the first syllable. For example,

Under normal circumstances, the second accent of British English is in front of the main stress, while the AE of the second accent appears in the back of the main stress, particularly, a compound word. For example,

Even if British English and American English are different at pronunciation, it is easy to identity them, which does not result in learning difficulties in daily study.

2.1.2 The bottom-up and top-down processes

Two views of listening have dominated listening instruction over the last twenty years: the bottom-up processing view and the top-down interpretation view. The bottom-up process view supports that listening is in process of decoding the sounds from the smallest meaningful units ( phonemes) to complete understand whole texts. The process can be explained in a linear fashion: the phonemic units are decoded and connected together to form words, which in turn from phrases; phrases are connected together to form utterances, which sequentially form complete meaningful texts (Nunan, 1997). Meaning itself is achieved as the last step in the process. Bottom-up view emphasizes the discrimination of input, because it is the beginning of the linear decoding. General bottom-up strategies in listening include listening for specific details, recognizing cognates, recognizing word-order patterns, and so on.

Differing from the bottom-up processing view is the top－down interpretation view．It is suggested that listeners , employing incoming sounds as clues, actively construct or reconstruct the original meaning of the speaker by utilizing background knowledge of the topic．The expectations activated by the background knowledge could help listeners interpretation of what is heard and the prediction of what will come next (ibid)Top－down strategies take account of main idea comprehension, prediction, inference and so forth．

I prefer to bottom-up process in our listening comprehension test. It is a process of decoding the sounds from phonemes that is related to accent. As a result, my experiment is aimed to explore the relations between listening comprehension and accent.

2.2 Empirical studies on the relationship

2.2.1 Studied on the effects of accents and English listening comprehension

In one study regarding the effect of accent in listening comprehension, Loppez-Soto and Berrara-Pardo (2007) studied accent perceptions of Spanish EFL learners in two different accents of English, namely; General American, Received Pronunciation of British and found that 60% of the students found British English to be “more correct” than American English.

The study above was conducted between only two accents, British and American. However, more related empirical studies were conducted between native accents and local accents and their results differ.

Smith and Bisazza (1982) carried out a complicated international study, testing the comprehensibility of three varieties of English (American, Indian and Japanese) in seven countries, three ESL (Hong Kong, India, tme Philippines), three EFL (Japan, Taiwan, Thailand), and one native speaker (Hawaii). Their results were not as clear as in the above studies. In the two countries where both a native speaker and a local speaker were used (India and Japan) the result were dissimilar: in Japan the Japanese was best comprehended of the three speakers (with the American second, and the Indian of the third);but in India the American was best comprehended ( with the Indian second and the Japanese third).

Another experiment was conducted in Hong Kong which was in line with the case of India in the Smith and Bisazza (1982) study, and found that native speakers, British and American, were more clearly comprehended than local Chinese speakers of English. Barlow, L. (2010), also provided evidence that there is no significant effect of accent on academic listening test scores for EFL students enrolled in a university foundations program at UAE University.

Major, Susan, Ferenc and Chandrika (2009) carried out an empirical study to explore the view that whether the listeners perform significantly better on a listening comprehension test when the speaker share their native language. The answer of the question is obscure. In this test, sometimes the native language listeners perform better than the non-native ones. Sometimes, it doesn’t perform like this. As a result, there are many limitations in the experiment, which leads to the uncertain results.

Another experiment conducted by Wilcox (1978) found out that Singaporean learners of English found speakers of their own accent background easier to understand than speakers from different accent backgrounds. Similarly, in Brown’s (1968) study in West Africa comparing Twi, Ewe, and British English Received Pronunciation, Twi and Ewe speakers understood English better when speakers are of native language. Smith and Bisazza’s (1982) research only partially supports this hypothesis: In their study, Japanese listeners can understood more easily Japanese speakers of English than they did U.S. speakers, but, surprisingly, subcontinental Indians understood U.S. speakers better than they understood Indian speakers.

2.2.2 Studies on the effects of difficulty levels on English listening comprehension

Zhang(2003) explored the impact of vocabulary and strength on English listening comprehension. He viewed vocabulary and strength as the two main factors to difficulty levels. It found out listening vocabulary size is more important to English listening comprehension than strength of listening vocabulary. and there is significant difference between difficulty levels and listening comprehension.

Another study carried out by Qiu (2015) is about the relationship between difficulty levels and listening activities. She found out that there is significant difference between difficulty levels and listening comprehension and use this rule to design listening teaching.

2.3 Problems in the previous studies

Even if there are many references , many problems still exist.

The first problem is that most studies are qualitative instead of quantitative. Most studies only succeed to find that there are some significant differences on listening comprehension among different English accents. They fail to find out the clear-out relations and point out the solutions to overcome the barrier of accents and improve our listening comprehension. As a result, carrying out more quantitative researches is of great necessity.

The second problem is the result of the study. Although many studies were conducted, they haven’t found an accurate result that is helpful to our study. There is neither clear result of accents influence on listening, nor the interaction of accents and difficulties on listening.

3. Methodology

3.1 Research question

This study investigates the differences of American and British accents and English listening comprehension. In addition, the passages we choose differ in difficulties. Therefore we can explore the relations between different levels. As a result, three research questions are aimed to answer.

1.Is there any main effect of American and British accents on English listening comprehension?

2. Is there any main effect of difficulty levels on English listening comprehension?

3. Are there any interaction effects among American and British accents and difficulty levels on English listening comprehension?

3.2 Listening material

Selection. There are two kinds of listening tests in general, objective questions and subjective questions. Considering that objective questions can make our data more accurate, we decide to select objective questions. Besides, freshmen are preparing for CET4, so they may be familiar with the listening materials in that test. We choose listening materials from CET6. We pick out six passages with four options from CET6. At first, we use one software “ Readability” to test the difficulty of each passage. Table 3.1 shows the data from “ Readability”.

Table 3.1

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