Reexamining Foreign Accent: How Much Can Personality Explain?

Abstract: Previous studies have shown that learners’ individual differences (e.g., motivation, age) can impact second language learners’ pronunciation. This study focused on one individual difference that has received relatively little attention-namely, personality. It sought to determine to what extent subcomponents of personality (as defined in the Big-Five model of personality) account for learners’ foreign accent during quasispontaneous and unplanned speech. Fifty-one English-speaking learners of Spanish performed a speaking task that was scored for degree of accentedness. Results re...