Since the 1990s, the emphasis on intelligibility as a goal in pronunciation teaching rather than near-native or nativelike competence has been reinforced by the increasing use of English as a lingua franca. The insight of the intelligibility principle has greatly impressed researchers in China's English education, but has "very limited and…

The expansion of the English language produced by non-native speakers has, in recent decades, been discussed by applied linguists from various theoretical perspectives. The discussion has highlighted evidence showing that the multiplicity and diversity of English uses have given rise to an acceleration in the rate of inter-variety contacts where…

This study investigates how second language (L2) listeners' perception is affected by two factors: the listeners' experience with the target dialect -- North American English (NAE) vs. Standard Southern British English (SSBE) -- and talkers' language background: native vs. non-native talkers; i.e. interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit…