The effect of early bilingualism on perceived foreign accent

High degree of between-rater variability in pronunciation assessment is often reported in literature. However, human assessments of pronunciation skills of second language (L2) learners are used in standardized languageproficiency tests. Besides, these scores are used as a reference point in evaluating computer-based systems for pronunciation teaching and testing. Therefore it is important to be aware of rater-related factors that might affect the degree of perceived foreign accent in L2 speech. We used Cronbach’s alpha and inter-class coefficient to estimate the between-rater agreement of 10 native English speakers who assessed accentedness in L2 utterances. We found that early immersion into bilingual environment might affect the degree of perceived foreign accent. This finding can be explained by interaction of two linguistic systems in early language acquisition, when phoneme prototypes are formed based on language-specific fine phonetic details.