While the frequent use of English and extensive exposure to native environment of the target language have become significant motivations for Vietnamese students to study in various native English-speaking countries, little empirical research has been done to evaluate their impact on the Vietnamese-accented English (VAE) intelligibility, especially from the nonnative English speakers’ perspective. To fill the gap, this study aimed to investigate the connection between the amount of English use and the intelligibility of VAE. It compared the intelligibility scores of a scripted speech by a Vietnamese staying in the US with that of another who had always lived in Vietnam. Both audio-recordings were used twice to test the intelligibility of VAE: (1) among Taiwanese EFL learners in the form of a listening cloze test, and (2) using an AI-powered speech-to-text transcription web application. Their intelligibility scores were calculated by counting the number of words with correct orthographic transcription compared to the original text. The study showed that: (1) both recorded passage-readings were considered unintelligible to the Taiwanese EFL learners; (2) the intelligibility scores of the recordings by the two Vietnamese speaker-participants were not significantly different despite the disparity in the amount of English use and native-English exposure; and (3) the poor intelligibility scores of the scripted recordings were attributed to both the speakers’ pronunciation and speech rate as well as the listeners’ unfamiliarity with the linguistic features of Vietnamese English. Therefore, besides challenging the conceived contribution of studying in English-speaking countries to the Vietnamese learners’ proficiency in English, the findings highlight the importance of enhancing the quality of teaching English pronunciation and practical English-based communicative contexts, which can improve the intelligibility of such a variety of English to both native and nonnative speakers.
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