The Effectiveness of British and American Accents on Listening Comprehension to the Second Semester of English Department at IAIN Ponorogo

Abstract

In terms of understanding English, listening, a crucial component of language acquisition, plays a significant role. It may seem like an easy task, but listening to a foreign language, especially English, will make it more difficult for learners. Listening is an essential part of learning. Some people hold the opinion that listening is the key to enhancing pronunciation. Because an accent is a distinctive manner of speaking the language, listening can help you become more fluent in English. Behravan claims that a community's various pronunciations or accents are referred to as dialects or accents. An important aspect of speech is the accent, which describes how a particular language is pronouced. Therefore, our own language serves as an accidental source of accent learning. Students' comprehension of learning and hearing English is influenced by accents. Accents are implied to have an impact on students' linguistic attitudes in a learning context.

In this study, the effects of two different accents—British and American—on pupils' listening comprehension skills are examined. The main goal is to evaluate how different accents affect students' comprehension abilities and determine which accent has a more noticeable impact on comprehension levels. 

The listening comprehension scores of the two groups of students, one exposed to the British accent and the other to the American accent, were measured before and after the treatments as part of this study's quantitative research methodology.

Results show that accents have a noticeable impact on listening comprehension. With a mean improvement of 16.2 points, the group exposed to the American accent showed a considerable improvement in their listening comprehension average scores. In contrast, the group exposed to the British accent experienced a marginally smaller rise in average score—an increase of 11.28 points. With the American accent outperforming the British accent in this study, choosing the right accent can have a big impact on pupils' listening comprehension abilities. Insightful information for efficient language training could be gained through further research into additional aspects affecting language understanding.