The Intelligibility and Comprehensibility of World Englishes to Non-Native Speakers

The aim of this study is to investigate which pronunciations of English are difficult or different from one’s first language, as well as to explore which factors are crucial for communication with people from other cultures when English is used as one of the World Englishes. Ninety-one undergraduate students (85 females and 6 males) from two different Korean universities participated in this study. A survey was conducted to determine their background information and to find out their attitudes toward World Englishes. This study was based on two concepts: 'intelligibility' (focusing on words) and 'comprehensibility' (focusing on meaning) when communicating with people from different countries'. For attaining intelligibility, one must overcome such factors as pronunciation, stress, intonation, and the vowel and consonant sounds of English. On the other hand, for achieving comprehensibility, there are other factors predominate such as grammatical, cultural, socio-linguistic and pragmatic aspects. Thus, in order to avoid intelligibility and comprehensibility problems, EFL/ESL students should learn all the common varieties of English used between native speakers and non-native speakers (NSs-NNSs) and between two non-native speakers (NNSs-NNSs). Additionally, students should consider and respect different situations and different cultural backgrounds to establish successful intelligibility and comprehensibility.