**5. Conclusion**

The current chapter, which was a desktop review, sought to provide an overview of various listener background variables that would influence oral performance ratings. Although the effects of these listener-related variables have been underemphasized in assessing the oral performance of L2 learners, researchers should take their influence into account and endeavor to make the potential contributions of these trait-irrelevant variables as negligible as possible. Listener training is assumed to mediate these extraneous variables. Through training, listeners are equipped with the necessary skills required to rate speech performances of L2 speakers more objectively using predetermined criteria. The effect of listener bias on the evaluation of L2 speech has also been researched in social contexts. As reported in the previous literature, the listeners who harbor negative attitudinal perspectives toward the speakers of a particular social group, especially a stigmatized one, have the proclivity to encode a distorted perception of their speech and more often than not find the speakers unintelligible. Structured intergroup contact, for example, can be a program devised to address the listeners' negative attitudes and reduce their bias. Explicit instruction of L2 listening strategies can also be effective in strengthening L2 listeners' self-efficacy and make them more motivated to embrace the challenges involved in participating in social interactions with NSs and encourage them to regard this as an opportunity to fortify their nascent oral skills. However, research on the listener role in communication is still in its infancy, and future studies should address this issue more comprehensively.

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**Author details**

Mohammadreza Dalman and Okim Kang\* Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, USA

provided the original work is properly cited.

\*Address all correspondence to: okim.kang@nau.edu

© 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

*Listener Background in L2 Speech Evaluation DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.89414* *Listener Background in L2 Speech Evaluation DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.89414*

*Metacognition in Learning*

limitations marked in the prior studies.

address this issue more comprehensively.

**5. Conclusion**

real-life settings. This reluctance on the part of L2 learners would exacerbate the existing bias toward them by NS. To mitigate the bias, if not eliminate it, educators can devise interventions which would foster L2 learners' self-efficacy through strategy instruction and other methods such as providing them with supportive mentors. By fortifying L2 learners' self-efficacy, they would be more encouraged to participate in interactions involving NSs. As a result of more interaction, the intensity of bias held by NSs toward that particular group of NNSs decreases.

With respect to listener background variables, researchers should be cognizant of the fact that some listener-related variables such as listeners' first language status and the amount of their exposure to accented varieties of English are more influential to listeners' perceptions of NNSs' speech than other variables (e.g., listeners' linguistic knowledge and their prior teaching experience). Thus, those variables warrant more attention in selecting listeners for rating NNSs' speech, as they might exert more potent influence and compromise the reliability of the assessment. On the other hand, as pointed out by Kang et al. [3], the effects of the latter variables are more contextually determined and should be considered regarding the type of assessment being administered. For example, if the purpose of speech assessment is evaluating the nuances of pronunciation, listeners' linguistic knowledge and their educational background should be considered for selecting listeners as raters. Additionally, the way that the prior studies have operationalized listener variables needs to be rectified. For example, Kang et al. [3] operationally defined listeners' linguistic sophistication as a function of three factors: (a) the number of foreign languages they spoke, (b) the number of years they studied foreign languages, and (c) the number of linguistic courses they had taken. However, this definition needs to be improved given that with the spread of globalization and emergence of English as an international language (EIL), the concept of foreign language is becoming ambiguous. Thus, future research should take initiatives to address these

The current chapter, which was a desktop review, sought to provide an overview of various listener background variables that would influence oral performance ratings. Although the effects of these listener-related variables have been underemphasized in assessing the oral performance of L2 learners, researchers should take their influence into account and endeavor to make the potential contributions of these trait-irrelevant variables as negligible as possible. Listener training is assumed to mediate these extraneous variables. Through training, listeners are equipped with the necessary skills required to rate speech performances of L2 speakers more objectively using predetermined criteria. The effect of listener bias on the evaluation of L2 speech has also been researched in social contexts. As reported in the previous literature, the listeners who harbor negative attitudinal perspectives toward the speakers of a particular social group, especially a stigmatized one, have the proclivity to encode a distorted perception of their speech and more often than not find the speakers unintelligible. Structured intergroup contact, for example, can be a program devised to address the listeners' negative attitudes and reduce their bias. Explicit instruction of L2 listening strategies can also be effective in strengthening L2 listeners' self-efficacy and make them more motivated to embrace the challenges involved in participating in social interactions with NSs and encourage them to regard this as an opportunity to fortify their nascent oral skills. However, research on the listener role in communication is still in its infancy, and future studies should

**12**
