Intelligibility of Chinese-accented English: A methodological review

In this article, we reviewed how the intelligibility of Chinese-accented English has been measured in prior works by examining 13 studies retrieved from three databases. The methodologies used in the selected studies were categorized into four task types that measured intelligibility from different perspectives. Specifically, these four task types were forced-choice, open-ended, meaning-comprehension, and accent rating tasks. This analysis revealed that open-ended tasks involving a transcription of speech were employed by the studies most frequently. At the same time, some studies demonstrated conceptual confusion between intelligibility and comprehensibility, which led to the inappropriate measurement of intelligibility. The current review also highlighted methodological limitations that should be addressed more carefully in future research.