*🎓 *We are happy to remind you about the next webinar in the CIRCE online seminar series, organized by the CIRCE https://www.circe-project.eu/ project in collaboration with DFCLAM University of Siena https://www.dfclam.unisi.it/it, H2IOSC https://www.h2iosc.cnr.it/ project and CNR-ILC.
*Speaker*: _Alice Henderson_ (Université de Grenoble Alpes, France)
*Title*: Learning to listen: Coping with spoken variation in the workplace
*Date*: Monday, April 28, 2025 - 16:30 CET
*Venue*: Online via Teams
*Attendees*: Secondary school teachers, researchers, language instructors
*Summary*: The university workplace is representative of international-ised/-ising workplaces in general, where different communities, languages, and cultures coexist. Staff encounter their colleagues’ and students’ accents – of Italian, of English, and in my case, French - and sometimes the result is that communication can be quite hard work. Even with the best intentions, sometimes we just cannot understand a speaker. However, when we think about spoken interactions, we have to accept that it is not just about how the speaker produces a language; the actions and skills of listeners should also be addressed. This flip or change of perspective begs two questions: can we, as listeners, learn to cope better with spoken variation? And if so, how?
In this talk I’ll summarize speech research findings about how listeners can improve their ability to adapt to new speakers and new accents. I’ll look at listener accommodation and accentism, as well as the conceptual trio of accentedness, comprehensibility and intelligibility. I’ll describe concrete ways to prepare listeners to cope with accented speech, with a primary focus on listeners instead of speakers. Examples will come mainly from my work with non-academic staff at a large, French public university; my 1-hour format for listener training can be reused in other professional contexts. If possible, I’ll also describe the next steps in this work, as I prepare to continue training previous workshop participants as part of a longitudinal study.
*Bio*: Alice Henderson is a Professor at Université Grenoble - Alpes, France where she teaches English for Specific Purposes to Science & Technology students. She taught English phonetics and phonology for 24 years and has been involved in training teachers in France, Norway, Poland, and Spain. In 2009 she initiated the international bi-annual conference English Pronunciation: Issues & Practices. Her research interests include English pronunciation teaching and learning, the perception of foreign-accented speech, and English Medium Instruction (EMI). Much of her research has focused on speakers, but she is also intrigued by listeners’ roles, from an intercultural and sociolinguistic perspective.​
Upcoming webinars:
- Ana Tankosic, /Intersectionality in translingual spaces: Migrant experiences from ‘down-under’/ (Monday, May 12, 2025)
- Giuliana Regnoli, /Unveiling linguistic bias: Approaches to accent perception and discrimination/ (Monday, May 26, 2025)
- Clara Molina, Unlearning Accentism: Action Research and Critical Pedagogies (Monday, June 30, 2025
To receive the link for the conference on 28/4, send an email to contact@circe-project.eu <mailto: contact@circe-project.eu> (Subject: Alice Henderson, link request)
Warm regards,
Claudia Soria
on behalf of the CIRCE Team