Mapping second language learners' accent of Spanish

The goal of this study is to provide a global view of Spanish second language (L2) accent and to identify the sounds and structures that lead to the perception of foreign accent. We designed a list of real Spanish monosyllabic words with various syllable structures that covers all phonemes in Spanish. The words were produced by L2 learners and native speakers and rated by native listeners. We used mixed effects regression models to evaluate the contributions of factors including consonant, vowel, and syllable structure, among others, to the perceived accent rating of each word. The results of this study are consistent with the predictions of prevailing theories in second language acquisition (SLA), while providing a global view with a quantitative measurement of L2 Spanish accent for all sounds.