ERIC Number: EJ1045251
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2014-Nov
Pages: 26
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0008-4506
EISSN: N/A
Second-Language Learners' Identification of Target-Language Phonemes: A Short-Term Phonetic Training Study
Cebrian, Juli; Carlet, Angelica
Canadian Modern Language Review, v70 n4 p474-499 Nov 2014
This study examined the effect of short-term high-variability phonetic training on the perception of English /b/, /v/, /d/, /ð/, /ae/, /? /, /i/, and /i/ by Catalan/Spanish bilinguals learning English as a foreign language. Sixteen English-major undergraduates were tested before and after undergoing a four-session perceptual training program involving a series of discrimination and identification tasks. Although some scores were already high at pre-test, there was improvement from pre-test to post-test, and this improvement generalized to novel words and a novel talker. An effect of word frequency was observed, but this effect was found to decrease after training. The results show that relatively advanced foreign-language learners in an instructional setting may improve in perception as a result of short-term high-variability phonetic training. The implications of these findings for the teaching of pronunciation are discussed.
Descriptors: Second Language Learning, Phonemes, Pronunciation Instruction, Phonetics, Teaching Methods, Undergraduate Students, Romance Languages, Spanish, Bilingualism, English (Second Language), Second Language Instruction, Majors (Students), Pretests Posttests, Word Frequency, Scores, Auditory Perception, Outcomes of Education, Foreign Countries
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Spain
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A