El efecto de la edad en la percepción de la pronunciación de español como segunda lengua

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the existence of the Critical Period Hypothesis in the study of perception of pronunciation in second language acquisition and to attempt to gauge the effect that the age at which one begins to learn a second language has on the acquisition of that language regarding how pronunciation is perceived, and to relate the results of my original research to existing research. Age is an individual factor that can greatly affect the efficiency of learning a second language (Hu, 2016). The literature shows that, while the existence of the critical period is debated, there are significant patterns in relation to the age in which one begins to learn a second language and its effect on acquisition of that language (Hartshorne, et al. 2018). This thesis focuses on the acquisition of phonology in a second language (L2) by examining the perception of L2 pronunciation. The research questions driving this research are: When playing recordings, is it possible for non-native Spanish speakers to be perceived as a native speaker based on their pronunciation and accent by learners of Spanish as a second language and by native Spanish speakers alike? How does age influence the perception of pronunciation of non-native speakers? To investigate the impact of age on L2 acquisition, two surveys were created: one, in English, that was sent to learners of Spanish as a L2; and one, in Spanish, that was sent to native speakers of Spanish. The survey sent to native speakers of Spanish included a perception task aimed at rating non-native speakers’ pronunciation. The results of the present study show that non-native speakers of Spanish can be perceived by both native and non-native speakers of Spanish as a native based on their accents, due to them having begun learning Spanish before the critical period. The non-native Spanish speaker who had learned Spanish as a L2 in adulthood was not perceived as a native speaker