the comparison between non-native pronunciation and listening comprehension of iranian efl learners

This paper aims to find the effect of non-native english accent on listening comprehension of iranian learners of english as a foreign language (efl). more specifically, it investigates whether persian efl learners would do better on a listening test in which a native english speaker presents the content or on a test in which a non-native speaker (iranian speaker) presents its content. participants were 15 ma students at sheikh bahaii university. they were selected by means of a toefl test from among 20 students. in the first phase, they listened to five pieces of news from the press tv and then answered the questions related to each piece of news. on the second phase, they listened to the other 5 pieces of news from the voa. the findings of the research showed that where the first language of the participants and the news reporter was the same, their scores on the non-native (iranian) reporters test was much higher than the native reporters. the results of the study show that using non-native speaker (nns) speech in listening comprehension tests may well increase the score where both the listener and speaker have the same l1 background. accordingly, learners’ l1 background can be reported as one of the factors affecting listening comprehension of second language learners.