MODELO DE EVALUACIÓN INSTITUCIONAL

Native, as one BA participant points out when commenting on Dialog 1, “is a trickier description than "advanced" is.” Yet the majority of participant comments indicate consensus that the interlocutors in Dialog 3 sound “like a group of native speakers”. Evaluations of this group were perhaps the most straight-forward, as there was little question of their level. With only a few exceptions, participants were generally confident of their claims regarding the native speaker group, and they defended their observations by mentioning features such as prosody, communicative competence, overlapping speech, and the use of discourse markers (specifically, “like”). The advanced non-natives in the previous section are described as “native-like”, a frequent yet somewhat nebulous term for describing proficiency levels. In this regard, pre- service teacher descriptions of the native speaker dialog lend insight into what, at least for this group of participants, may exist behind conceptualizations of nativeness.

Pronunciation: In contrast to the high-intermediate and advanced groups, there were no references to interlocutor accent for the native speaker group. Thus, while accent was a feature cited several times as a means for classifying the interlocutors as non-native in the previous dialogs, the lack of any reference to accent for the native speaker group is revealing in that the pronunciation of these speakers may be interpreted as representing an unspecified, ideological norm, and a basis against which the other speakers are compared.

Prosody: While “accent” is mentioned by participants in reference to the high-intermediate and advanced dialogs, prosody is a feature mentioned only in reference to the native speaker dialog and therefore perhaps more strongly associated with native speakerhood. One participant suggests that native speakers are more adept at linking (excerpt 51). Another participant

compares this behavior to mumbling (excerpt 52). Other prosodic features mentioned include a fast speech rate and control of intonation (excerpts 53-54).

51 FG 1, MA-Nov (NS), commenting on Dialog 3:

Allie: I mean I just think that non-native speakers tend to put more space

between the words. You know, the end of one word doesn’t necessarily

connect into the beginning of another word. And, it makes it easier to understand when it doesn’t do that. But this one, clearly, had a lot of overlapping.

52 FG 3, PhD, MA-Adv & MA-Nov (NS & NNS), commenting on Dialog 3:

Peter:  be-, because e-, every bit, you can’t have those .. mumbled .. we o-, we’re

native speakers .. and I’m so, so sorry for you guys <indicating NNSs in

group> 

Caba: M-hm.

Peter:  we mumble all the time. 

Susan: Yes.

???: @@@@

Peter:  we’re <unintelligible mumbling>. Even in transitions where we sort of

fall off something and then start it up again, and for you to listen to that as not-, as non-native speakers, like these guys, you’d be like what…

53 Survey, MA-Nov (NS), commenting on Dialog 3:

Participant 29: Sounds like native English speakers sharing guilty pleasures. …Good

example of "filler" language and intonational practices in English (rising sentence-

final intonation)

54 FG 3, MA-Nov & MA-Adv (NNS), commenting on Dialog 3:

Rahul: Yeah, I-, talking about my L1 I thought I have always been thinking that I’m a

slow speaker in my native language. My first language. But once my friend

recorded a clip, like one minute, and when I listened to it I started

comparing myself with a person who speaks very fast. One of my friends

who speaks very fast in .. his 

Caba: Ten-thousand-, one thousand words a mi-, a second.

Rahul:  yeah, so, i-, it’s hard to, to know about how .. uh .. fast you are speaking in

your L1. For example when I started here it was to be honest, it was hard to me to, uh, to follow Casey .. i-, i-, in first semester, but now I’m used to it The comments above make references to certain qualities of speech that participants seem to associate with native speakers, including intonation, mumbling, and speech rate. Other

comments, encompassing the two main areas of Communicative skill and Discourse markers,

provide more detailed insight of native speech by participants and are covered below. Communicative style: Communicative style was presented in the form of an unspoken dichotomy that suggests one group (native speakers) behave in a certain way that the other group of the dichotomy (non-native speakers) does not. For instance, as one survey participant wrote: “people cutting each other off, laughing, adding on to what last person said, sounds like all native speakers.” Indeed, at times there may be “a lot of overlapping”, which is something that native speakers “have a tendency to do.”

55 Survey, MA-Nov (NS), commenting on Dialog 3:

Participant 43: Sounds like a group of native speakers relating to one another about what

they do in their free time, or ways they waste time, people cutting each other off,

laughing, adding on to what last person said, sounds like all native speakers

56 FG 1, MA-Nov (NS), commenting on Dialog 3:

Allie: […] I mean I just think that non-native speakers tend to put more space

between the words. You know, the end of one word doesn’t necessarily connect into the beginning of another word. And, it makes it easier to

understand when it doesn’t do that. But this one [dialog], clearly, had a lot of overlapping.

57 FG 3, MA-Nov (NS), commenting on Dialog 3:

Susan: So, I really thought that they were native speakers. And they, they spoke

over each other. .. Which .. we have a tendency to do.

Discourse markers: Several participants mentioned the discourse marker “like” as “typical of native English speakers”. In fact, a focus group participant directly justifies her evaluation of the interlocutors as native because of this marker (excerpt 58). This observation is confirmed by three other participants, who describe the use of “like” as “typical” of native speakers (excerpts 59 – 61).

58 FG 3, MA-Nov (NS & NNS), commenting on Dialog 3:

Susan: I thought they were native speakers.-->

Caba: Yeah.

Susan: Primarily because of the use of ‘like’. And you count them.

59 Survey, BA (NS), commenting on Dialog 3:

Participant 15: The use of conversational fillers such as 'like' is typical of native

English speakers.

60 Survey, MA-Nov (NS), commenting on Dialog 3:

Participant 29: Sounds like native English speakers sharing guilty pleasures.

Good example of "filler" language and intonational practices in English (rising sentence-final intonation)

61 Survey, BA Participant, commenting on Dialog 3:

Participant 16: Although the main speaker seems to be a native speaker, the use of

English is pretty casual and so interspersed with "like" as to make it seem she is not

very educated. However, that's the reality on the street.

For the most part, participants identify the discourse marker like as an idiosyncratic feature of

native speaker speech, and in one case the participant evaluates the use of this discourse marker positively, referring to it as a “[g]ood example of "filler" language”. However, a discernible

majority of comments about the overlapping speech and the discourse marker like are severely