The article details a two-phase study investigating the relative contributions of talker-familiarity and talker-intelligibility to L2 listening comprehension by learners in a classroom setting. Students from beginning to low-intermediate German FL classes participated in German language listening tasks, being exposed to speech by their German teacher (familiar talker) and other, unfamiliar talkers. Findings were consistent in both phases of the study: the relative intelligibility of particular talkers was more predictive to L2 listening accuracy than familiarity with the talker. Follow-up investigations revealed a relationship between speech rate and listening comprehension accuracy.