Understanding Second Language Speakers: What REALLY Matters?

Tracey Derwing is a Professor Emeritus of TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Alberta. She has extensively researched second language fluency and pronunciation, especially the relationships among intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accent. She will discuss what research tells us both the second language speaker and the native listener can do to improve their mutual communication. Derwing is presently an adjunct professor in linguistics at Simon Fraser University and has for eleven years served as co-director of the Prairie Metropolis Centre, a consortium of Canadian university research centers involved in immigration and integration research. Quentin Johnson Lecture in Linguistics