Visual cues such as seeing the speaker’s face and gestures have been found to facilitate second-language (L2) listeners’ comprehension of native English speech (Sueyoshi & Hardison, 2005). Very few studies attempted to investigate how audiovisual cues affect the comprehension of nonnative accented speech (e.g., Barros, 2010; Zheng & Samuel, 2019). The findings of these studies have been inconclusive, and these mixed results can be ascribed to the varying degrees of speakers’ accents, the lack of comprehensibility and accentedness ratings and/or lack of descriptions of nonnative speaker’s gesture use. To address this, the present study examined: a) whether speaker’s accent (native vs. nonnative) and stimulus condition (i.e., audiovisual (AV) including speaker’s gesture and face vs. audiovisual including only speaker’s face vs. audio (A) only) affect L2 listeners’ comprehension of English discourse, b) whether stimulus condition affects L2 listeners’ accentedness and comprehensibility ratings of native and nonnative speech, c) whether speaker’s accent and stimulus condition affect L2 listeners’ perception of and preference for visual cues, and d) whether speaker’s accent affects L2 listeners’ preference for visual cues in everyday communication and L2 language development. A total of 120 Arab university students who were L2 learners of English in the US, UK, Australia or the Middle East were assigned to one of six conditions: a) native speaker-AV-gesture-face (n= 20), b) native speaker-AV-face (n= 20), c) native speaker-A-only (n= 20), d) nonnative speaker-AV-gesture-face (n= 20), e) nonnative speaker-AV-face (n= 20), and c) nonnative speaker-A-only (n= 20). The participants in each condition completed: a multiple-choice listening comprehension test in segments following audiovisual or A-only clips of a native or nonnative speaker’s lecture on the same topic, a comprehensibility and accentedness questionnaire, a preference for and perception of visual cues questionnaire and an optional follow-up interview. Listening comprehension scores were significantly higher for native speech versus nonnative speech. Results revealed that seeing the native speaker’s gestures had some facilitative effects. Such facilitative effects were not observed for the listening comprehension scores for the nonnative speaker. The positive and facilitative effects of seeing the native speaker’s gestures were also observed in the L2 listeners’ accentedness and comprehensibility ratings of native speech. The native speaker was rated as most comprehensible and nativelike in the AV-gesture-face condition; such positive effects of seeing the speaker’s gestures were not observed in the ratings of nonnative speech. Surprisingly, the nonnative speaker was rated as least nativelike in the AV-gesture-face condition, and stimulus condition had no significant effect on comprehensibility ratings of nonnative speech. Responses to the questionnaires and follow-up interview indicated that, unlike for the native speaker, seeing the nonnative speaker’s face and/or gestures was not facilitative. The responses uncovered a general preference for visual cues in L2 listeners’ everyday communication and in developing their English skills. Responses also uncovered L2 listeners’ general preference for native English speech versus nonnative. The findings of this study shed light on how and when visual cues and accent can decrease or increase L2 listeners’ comprehension. The results provide valuable implications for L2 pedagogy and assessment and it raises a number of important questions that can help further extend this line of research on the effects of visual cues and accented speech.
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