6. Speech perception in second language learners: The re-education of selective perception

Previous findings in the literature point to the influence that speech perception has on word recognition. However, which specific aspects of the first (L1) and second language (L2) mapping play the most important role is still not fully understood. This study explores whether, and if so, how, L1-L2 syllable-structure differences affect word recognition. Spanish- and German-speaking English learners completed an AXB and a word-monitoring task in English that manipulated the presence of a vowel in words with /s/-initial consonant clusters—e.g., especially versus specially. The results show a clear effect of L1 on L2 learners’ perception and word recognition, with the German group outperforming the Spanish one. These results indicate that the similarity in the syllable structure between English and German fosters positive transfer in both perception and word recognition despite the inexact segmental mapping.

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Production and perception in the acquisition of Spanish and Portuguese

Romance Phonetics and Phonology ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198739401.003.0018 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 367-380

Author(s):

Jaydene Elvin ◽

Polina Vasiliev ◽

Paola Escudero

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Speech Perception ◽

Speech Production ◽

Language Learners ◽

Critical Review ◽

Second Language Learners ◽

Theoretical Models ◽

Speakers Of Other Languages ◽

Large Corpus ◽

Learning To Listen

Learning to listen to and produce the sounds of a new language is a difficult task for many second-language learners. While there is a large corpus of literature that investigates Spanish and Portuguese learners’ perception and production of an L;2, particularly English, there is relatively little research available for the opposite scenario, namely, how speakers of other languages learn to perceive and produce the sounds of Spanish and Portuguese. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a critical review of the available literature in this less studied area. First some general facts relating to non-native and L;2 speech perception and production are presented, including the theoretical models that aim at explaining these phenomena. A review follows of the empirical findings currently available for L;2 speech production and perception in Spanish and Portuguese, and how these two abilities relate in the process of acquiring the sounds of these languages.

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Second Language Phonetics

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics ◽

10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.415 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Ocke-Schwen Bohn

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Speech Perception ◽

Speech Production ◽

Language Learners ◽

Second Language Learners ◽

Native Language ◽

Social Consequences ◽

Learning Ability ◽

Research Areas ◽

Second Language Speech Production

The study of second language phonetics is concerned with three broad and overlapping research areas: the characteristics of second language speech production and perception, the consequences of perceiving and producing nonnative speech sounds with a foreign accent, and the causes and factors that shape second language phonetics. Second language learners and bilinguals typically produce and perceive the sounds of a nonnative language in ways that are different from native speakers. These deviations from native norms can be attributed largely, but not exclusively, to the phonetic system of the native language. Non-nativelike speech perception and production may have both social consequences (e.g., stereotyping) and linguistic–communicative consequences (e.g., reduced intelligibility). Research on second language phonetics over the past ca. 30 years has resulted in a fairly good understanding of causes of nonnative speech production and perception, and these insights have to a large extent been driven by tests of the predictions of models of second language speech learning and of cross-language speech perception. It is generally accepted that the characteristics of second language speech are predominantly due to how second language learners map the sounds of the nonnative to the native language. This mapping cannot be entirely predicted from theoretical or acoustic comparisons of the sound systems of the languages involved, but has to be determined empirically through tests of perceptual assimilation. The most influential learner factors which shape how a second language is perceived and produced are the age of learning and the amount and quality of exposure to the second language. A very important and far-reaching finding from research on second language phonetics is that age effects are not due to neurological maturation which could result in the attrition of phonetic learning ability, but to the way phonetic categories develop as a function of experience with surrounding sound systems.

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