Previous research has demonstrated significant improvements in the intelligibility of synthetic speech following listener training [E. Schwabetal., Human Factors27, 395–408 (1985)]. In the present study, the effect of listener training on second‐language speech intelligibility was investigated. Chinese‐accented words and sentences were presented to four groups of native English listeners—one training and one control group for each of two speakers. On word trials, listeners were instructed to select the word presented from two minimal‐pair alternatives; on sentence trials, listeners were instructed to write down what they heard. Listener responses were scored as percent of intended words correctly identified. The two training groups participated in three 1‐h training sessions. Auditory and visual feedback was provided to listeners during the training sessions only. Performance of the training and control groups was compared across pre‐ and posttraining test sessions. Improvement in minimal‐pair word intelligibility following training was found across speakers for the training group, relative to the control group; a similar but smaller improvement in sentence intelligibility was found. Word results will be discussed in terms of improvement in discriminability following training for the twelve phonemic contrasts tested. [Work supported in part by NIH‐NIDCD Grant No. 2R44DC02213.]