Discussion

While it is difficult, and indeed unwise, to make generalisations from these findings, there are one or two issues that would benefit from some further discussion.

Understanding different accents

It is difficult to draw conclusions from the NNES responses regarding accents, With reference to the variety of accents exemplified as ‘easy’ and ‘difficult’ to understand, it is necessary to bear in mind the mix of regional and national languages and accents that the participants represent as well as those that they are familiar with.

For instance, there is some suggestion from the responses that when exemplifying ‘difficult’ accents, participants refer to accents of those whose language group is quite distant from their own. For example, a Czech participant referring to ‘Far-East and Spanish’ as difficult and northern Europeans referring to southern European accents as difficult. There may also be a tendency to relate specific difficulties experienced with one or two individual speakers, with a particular national or regional accent, to generalisations about the difficulty of whole language groups or accents.

NNES communication difficulties

Relating to the specific difficulties in communicating in international meetings outlined by NNES participants, there seems to be a spectrum of issues. These range from comprehension difficulties, i.e. processing fast or quiet speech, which seems to be a problem shared by participants with both high and lower English language proficiency, through difficulties in both comprehension and production, due to vocabulary limitations, which seem to relate to speakers whose self-assessment of their language proficiency (particular in speaking) is relatively low, to difficulties in managing interactions appropriately.

This last category appears to relate particularly to participants who rate their own language ability relatively highly but who nevertheless feel they have difficulty in high-speed discussions, particularly trying to interrupt or express a particular viewpoint.

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Non-native English speaker (NNES) data	\|	NES comments

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