(792)EFFECT OF TALKER VARIABILITY ON COMPREHENSION OFFOREIGN-ACCENTED ENGLISH: A COGNITIVE LOAD THEORYAPPROACH

摘要

Using a cognitive load theory approach, this study was conducted to investigate theeffects of training using multiple accents on perceiving foreign-accented English for EFLlearners with different levels of expertise. Specifically, it explored the benefits of usingmultiple talkers during training compared to a single talker for Chinese EFL learners onperceptual learning of Indian-accented English. There were four training conditions forlisteners with either high- or low- expertise levels of English language proficiency: 1. A lowvariability multiple-talker training condition in which the stimuli sentences produced by fourIndian- accented speakers were presented in a fixed order;;2. A high variabilitymultiple-talker training condition in which the four speakers were arranged to producesentences in random order;;3. A talker-specific training condition in which the training andtest talkers were the same;;4. A single talker training condition.After three consecutive days of training, different effects were found depending on levelsof expertise. For the high-expertise EFL learners, results showed better performance andlower cognitive load on post-tests using multiple-talker training conditions (conditions1&2)relative to the single-talker training condition (condition4), especially after multiple- talkertraining with high variability (condition2). However, test performance following talkerspecifictraining (condition3) was best of all when the test talker was the same as thetraining talker, demonstrating a strong schema specific effect. For the low-expertise EFLlearners, however, their working memory was overloaded when learning to listen tomultiple accents and therefore multiple accents had detrimental effects on the constructionand automation of schemas. Performance following the single talker training(conditions3&4) was significantly better than following multiple- talker training conditions(conditions1&2). These results demonstrated an expertise-reversal effect indicating thatmultiple-talker training may facilitate perceptual learning of foreign-accented English forEFL learners;however, this result depended on learners’ English language proficiency.