Nonnative English Speaker Performance on the Basic English Lexicon (BEL) Sentences

• Published in: Journal of speech, language, and hearing research Vol. 56; no. 3; pp. 792 - 804
• Main Authors: Rimikis, Stacey, Smiljanic, Rajka, Calandruccio, Lauren
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) 01.06.2013; American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
• Subjects: Acoustics; Adolescent; Adult; Adult Basic Education; Adult Students; Age; Audiology; Auditory Perception; Correlation; Cultural Differences; Cultural Diversity; Difficulty Level; English (Second Language); English as a second language; English proficiency; Female; Humans; Immigration; Internet; Language Fluency; Language Proficiency; Language Tests; Lexicon; Linguistic Performance; Linguistics; Listening; Male; Middle Aged; Morphemes; Morphology (Languages); Multilingualism; Native Language; Native languages; New York; Noise; Nonnative speakers; Participant Characteristics; Predictor Variables; Pronunciation; Questionnaires; Recognition; Scoring; Second Language Learning; Sentences; Simplified language; Speech; Speech Discrimination Tests; Speech Perception; Speech tests; Spoken language; Statistical Analysis; Studies; Surveys and Questionnaires; Testing; Texas; Verbs; Vocabulary; Word Recognition; Young Adult; New York; Texas; United States; United States > US; California; cultural and linguistic diversity; audiology; speech perception
• ISSN: 1092-4388; 1558-9102; 1558-9102
• DOI: 10.1044/1092-4388(2012/12-0178)

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine sentence-recognition performance for a large, diverse group of nonnative speakers of English on the recently developed Basic English Lexicon (BEL) sentence materials and to determine whether BEL sentence lists are equated in difficulty for this population. Method: The BEL sentences were presented to 102 nonnative speakers of English with normal hearing and varied linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Five hundred sentences were presented mixed with noise spectrally matched to the target sentences. Subjects completed an online questionnaire providing detailed demographic and linguistic information. Listeners' spoken English proficiency was also assessed using the Versant English Test (Pearson Education, 2010). Results: Nonnative listeners showed equal word-recognition performance for 3 groups of BEL sentence lists, each group containing sentence lists that had equivalent difficulty. In addition, spoken language proficiency and several demographic and linguistic factors were significantly correlated with BEL performance. Conclusion: The BEL sentence materials have been tested on a large cohort of nonnative speakers of English and have been found to be appropriate for use in speech-perception testing with this population. (Contains 10 tables and 6 figures.)