Native Speaker Judgements as Indicators of L2 Oral Proficiency: Redefining the Role of the Native Speaker in Proficiency Guidelines

摘要

The current study attempted to clarify the predictive validity ofthe evaluative interlocutor role assigned to native speakers within the ACTFL Guidelines and, more generally, to provide evidence regarding how a rather homogenous group ofnative speakersjudged non-native efforts at communication. The fundamental issue ofinterest to the study was whether or not native speakers of German would agree with each other in rating non-native speech taken from a test based on the AcrFL Guidelines. The aspects of NNS production chosen for rating were a broad range of linguistic characteristics that figure prominently in the ACTFL Guidelines proficiency level descriptors: grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehensibility. In order to further elucidate the extent to which native speakers act in the role assigned to them by the ACTFL Guidelines, their impressionistic reactions to non-native speech were sought through a set ofopenended questions.