Come valutano i parlanti nativi la pronuncia dei non nativi? Indagine esplorativa s’un campione d’apprendenti italofoni di spagnolo LS

This contribution presents the results of an exploratory investigation onhow native speakers perceive and evaluate the Italian accent of FL Spanish.The questionnaire was designed to evaluate four dimensions: comprehensibility, “fluency”, “foreign accent” and “irritability”. The four dimensionsare assessed using Likert scales;for fluency and foreign accent the eval-uators are also asked to express a score for each of a series of aspects pre-selected by the au-thor. For a more refined evaluation, open questions are provided for the dimensions “compre-hensibility”, “foreign accent” and “irritability”. We attempted to answer two main questions: 1. What kind of interaction can be observed be-tween the four dimensions? 2. What are the concrete linguistic aspects that determine the per-ceptual evaluations of the evaluators, in relation to foreign accent? The results show an in-tense correlation between accentedness,on the one hand, and irritability and fluency, on the other. As for the second question, realization of final consonants, excessive closing or open-ing of mid vowels and markedly ascending contour in continuative or assertive intonation are the most frequently reported aspects.