Listeners and raters: Similarities and differences in evaluation of accented speech

This chapter will review research findings on listener background characteristics that influence evaluations of L2 accented speech, and discuss how these findings may affect both listeners and raters when evaluating speech. In this chapter, we define raters as a group of specialists who are formally trained to rate speaking performance on a language proficiency test. In contrast, we define listeners as anyone, regardless of formal training, who is asked to evaluate speech for research purposes. Although these two terms may be used interchangeably, we want to emphasize the difference between the two groups because, in assessment contexts, not only is internal consistency of the scale important but also agreement among raters and rater training are standard practice.