The impact of study abroad in degree of foreign accent in the L2

Abstract

The present paper examined the effects of the Study Abroad learning context on pronunciation accuracy. A phonetic experiment was designed to check gains in the foreign-accented speech of nine Spanish undergraduate students who resided and studied in the UK for eight months. Three native speakers of English were in charge of listening and rating samples coming from the oral narrations provided by the aforementioned students, who were recorded four times all through the entire stay abroad. Results showed that seven out of the nine students were able to diminish their Spanish accent, but some of them were perceived as being less accented than others. Results also demonstrated that some features of the English pronunciation improved more than others, suggesting that the most marked features are more difficult to acquire.