Intelligibility Benefit of Lombard Speech for Pakistani Learners of Mandarin Chinese

This study examines whether Mandarin Lombard speech (speech produced in noise) enhances intelligibility for Pakistani learners. In the experiment, participants heard two kinds of speech where Mandarin sentences spoken in quiet (plain speech) and in noisy conditions (Lombard speech) and then they need to identified target words of the two speeches both in quiet and noisy environments. Results showed benefits of Lombard speech in both quiet and noisy conditions, especially at the end of a sentence. These findings suggest that Lombard speech offers an intelligibility benefit for non-native listeners, which may provide insights for second language learning.