Forming New Vowel Categories in Second Language Speech: The Case of Polish Learners' Production of English /I/ and /e/

The paper concentrates on formation of L2 English vowel categories in the speech of Polish learners. More specifically, it compares distribution of two English categories - /I/ and /e/ relative to neighbouring Polish vowels. 43 participants recorded Polish and English vowels in a /bVt/ context. First two formants were measured at a vowel midpoint and plotted on a vowel plane. The results reveal that while a separate /I/ category is formed fairly effectively in Polish learners pronunciation of English, a category of /e/ is almost completely subsumed by a Polish vowel /ϵ

Effects of Phonetic Training on the Perception and Production of /i:/-/I/ and /ӕ/-/ʌ/ by Catalan/Spanish Learners of English

[Abstract] Cross-language differences in vowel perception and production have shown clear limitations in the accuracy with L2 phonetic segments are perceived and produced by native speakers of Romance languages. The present study investigates Catalan/Spanish learners’ ability to learn to discriminate and produce the English tense-lax (/i:/-/I/) and front-central (/ӕ/- /ʌ/) vowel contrasts through a six-week phonetic training, given their difficulties to use and access to L2 spectral and durational information. A minimal-pair AX vowel discrimination task and F1-F2 and duration measures in vowels elicited through a delayed repetition task were used to assess learners’ gains in perceptual and productive ability, respectively, before (pre-test) and after (post-test) training. Accuracy in vowel discrimination was found to increase significantly, whereas in production only modest accuracy gains were obtained. These results suggest that, despite a more accurate perception of L2 vowels, learners still produced /i:/-/I/ and /ӕ/-/ʌ/ with no significant spectral differences at post-test but rather a durational contrast that is larger than in L1 English

Why pitch sensitivity matters : event-related potential evidence of metric and syntactic violation detection among spanish late learners of german

Event-related potential (ERP) data in monolingual German speakers have shown that sentential metric expectancy violations elicit a biphasic ERP pattern consisting of an anterior negativity and a posterior positivity (P600). This pattern is comparable to that elicited by syntactic violations. However, proficient French late learners of German do not detect violations of metric expectancy in German. They also show qualitatively and quantitatively different ERP responses to metric and syntactic violations. We followed up the questions whether (1) latter evidence results from a potential pitch cue insensitivity in speech segmentation in French speakers, or (2) if the result is founded in rhythmic language differences. Therefore, we tested Spanish late learners of German, as Spanish, contrary to French, uses pitch as a segmentation cue even though the basic segmentation unit is the same in French and Spanish (i.e., the syllable). We report ERP responses showing that Spanish L2 learners are sensitive to syntactic as well as metric violations in German sentences independent of attention to task in a P600 response. Overall, the behavioral performance resembles that of German native speakers. The current data suggest that Spanish L2 learners are able to extract metric units (trochee) in their L2 (German) even though their basic segmentation unit in Spanish is the syllable. In addition Spanish in contrast to French L2 learners of German are sensitive to syntactic violations indicating a tight link between syntactic and metric competence. This finding emphasizes the relevant role of metric cues not only in L2 prosodic but also in syntactic processing

Sounding natural: improving oral presentation skills

This paper discusses how multimodal resources can be used to teach oral communication strategies, as exemplified in a course taught at the University of Padua, Italy. The course focused on lexicon and language structures in use, pronunciation and intonation, body language and cultural awareness. A variety of multimedia resources were used, including: pictures and illustrations; digital slides; audio files for pronunciation exercises and for audio-video feedback with the speech analysis software Praat; video clips from online English courses and other YouTube videos of authentic interviews, talk shows, news, monologues, and presentations. The main class activities were: listening and watching video clips; metalinguistic discussions on the use of verbal and non-verbal language in different linguistic situations; pronunciation practice; and speaking. Students were filmed while speaking and received feedback on their oral and communicative skills. Overall, the course appeared to be highly effective in raising students’ awareness of facts about English communication and its workings

Finnish Children Producing English Vowels — Studying in an English Immersion Class Affects Vowel Production

The aim of this study was to examine how earlier second language teaching affects Finnish school children’s pronunciation of British English vowels. Two groups of Finnish children between the ages of eleven and thirteen were tested. The early learners studied in an English immersion class in a Finnish elementary school while the control group attended a regular Finnish speaking class at the same school. The task consisted of twenty three English stimulus words which included the twelve monophthong English target vowels in voiced and voiceless environments. The words were repeated seven times during the task. The participants produced the words after a native model and the target vowel qualities were then acoustically analysed. Statistical analysis revealed a group main effect. More specifically the analysis showed that the groups differed significantly in the way they produced target vowel second formant (F2) values. The F2 difference was only significant in the voiced context. Closer examination of the groups’ vowel qualities revealed that the control group tended to produce the F2 values higher than the early learner group in most of the target vowels. The higher F2 values can be an indication of more frontal tongue position or less lip rounding during vowel production

Sounds Serbian? Acoustic properties of Serbian EFL students' speech

This paper presents the findings of a study of the acoustic properties of Serbian EFL students' vowels. The participants were 12 junior-year students of the English Department. Their vowel production was recorded in three different contexts, i.e. speaking tasks: reading words in citation form, reading a text aloud, and speaking. The acoustic measurements included vowel duration and F1 and F2 formant frequency values. The results showed that neither the production of vowel qualities nor the duration differences used by the students were without problem

Finnish children producing English vowels - Studying in an English immersion class affects vowel production

The aim of this study was to examine how earlier second language teaching affects Finnish school children’s pronunciation of British English vowels. Two groups of Finnish children between the ages of eleven and thirteen were tested. The early learners studied in an English immersion class in a Finnish elementary school while the control group attended a regular Finnish speaking class at the same school. The task consisted of twenty three English stimulus words which included the twelve monophthong English target vowels in voiced and voiceless environments. The words were repeated seven times during the task. The participants produced the words after a native model and the target vowel qualities were then acoustically analysed. Statistical analysis revealed a group main effect. More specifically the analysis showed that the groups differed significantly in the way they produced target vowel second formant (F2) values. The F2 difference was only significant in the voiced context. Closer examination of the groups’ vowel qualities revealed that the control group tended to produce the F2 values higher than the early learner group in most of the target vowels. The higher F2 values can be an indication of more frontal tongue position or less lip rounding during vowel production.</p

Working Memory and Second‐Language Accent Acquisition

We explored the proposal that overt repetition of verbal information improves the acquisition of a native accent in a second language. Mandarin-speaking Chinese learners of English were recorded while repeating and reading out English sentences before and after one of three treatments: (1) Repeating native English sentences subvocally, "covert repetition,"(2) Repeating sentences out loud, "overt repetition," and(3) Unfilled time of comparable duration. The sentences were rated by English speakers for their nativeness, fluency, and intelligibility. Overt repetition improved accent rating for read-out sentences. Covert repetition did not. Neither condition improved accent rating for repeated sentences, suggesting that immediate repetition depends on temporary rather than long-term representations. Our results provide some support for the use of overt repetition in accent learning. From a theoretical perspective, an interpretation is proposed in terms of a separation between phonological and articulatory coding within the phonological loop component of working memory

Analysis of EFL speech production corpora according to the Speech Learning Model

[ES] Este TFG trata de mostrar cómo pronuncia una persona del País Vasco al hablar en Inglés (teniendo esta lengua como lengua extranjera) de acuerdo a un modelo teórico sobre el aprendizaje de segundas lenguas. También trata de mostrar si éste modelo es capaz de explicar todos los fallos de pronunciación de la hablante y, en caso de que no lo haga, sugerir que puede que haya necesidad de desarrollar una teoría enfocada al aprendizaje del habla de lenguas extranjeras.[EN] Nowadays learning a language other than one's own mother tongue is seen as a must in our society. The reasons for considering this are various: possibilities of moving from one place to another (travelling), immigrating to start a better life in a foreign country, bigger chances to achieve a better career and the like. In this context, it is important to speak the language of the place of destination accurately to be understood by the native population. This means that grammar is not the only important aspect to be acquired in a new language but also its speech patterns and pronunciation. One of the main researchers investigating the phenomenon of pronunciation is J. E. Flege. He has conducted numerous experiments and pieces of research regarding second language (L2) speech acquisition and developed the Speech Learning Model (SLM) (1995) to explain and predict the pronunciation mistakes L2 learners make. A similar phenomenon to L2 learning is foreign language (FL) learning. Nevertheless, it has to be stressed that, although similar, they are not the same event. One of the main differences between these two learning processes is that L2 learners are in a linguistic immersion setting whereas FL students are not; and also that the latter ones receive formal classroom instruction mostly oriented to grammar skills rather than to oral skills. Thus, from this first impression, it can be deduced that L2 and FL learning do not occur in the same circumstances. As a consequence, a need to verify whether an L2 learning oriented theory was sufficient to explain all phenomena occurring in FL learning was detected. Therefore, the aim of this study is on the one hand, to analyse FL speech production and see whether the SLM can explain all pronunciation errors of a FL speaker; and on the other, to shed some light on FL speech teaching methodologies so that it becomes more effective and efficient. The confirmation of the existence of unexplained or unpredicted mistakes might mean that a FL speech learning theory would be needed; and a big amount of predicted mistakes might suggest that the teaching practices should be remodelled. The methodology followed in the analysis of errors was listening to the data with Praat and classifying the mistakes according to the SLM (as new, same or similar sound categories). The results showed that some of the participant's mistakes were not explained by the model (such as orthographically motivated mistakes). Taking into account that, as demonstrated by many studies -such as the one by Gómez Lacabex & García Lecumberri (2010)-, perception and production ii training do help improving those abilities, it would be interesting to incorporate such training sessions into the classrooms. Finally, this dissertation also aims to encourage more research within the field of FL speech learning in order to firstly, understand better this phenomenon and secondly, improve the teaching system