The purpose of the current study is to investigate the acquisition of spirantization of /b, d, ɡ/ in the Spanish of adult learners who have spent two years abroad in a Spanish-speaking country. In addition to whether or not participants acquired spirantization, this study seeks to discover the influence of certain factors (e.g. style, prior Spanish instruction, Spanish language use, attitude, motivational intensity, etc.) on their target-like pronunciation of /b, d, ɡ/. Two different tasks were administered, one formal (a reading list) and another less formal (a read story). Tokens of /b, d, ɡ/ were analyzed spectrographically for manner of articulation. The results show that the majority of the learners pronounced target-like /b, d, ɡ/ over 80% of the time. A logistic regression analysis shows that the following factors are significant in their contribution to the acquisition of spirantization: Cultural Integration, Spanish language use, Empathy, Music Instruction, High School Spanish Instruction, and Motivational Intensity.

The current study is a phonetic description and phonological analysis, using the Autosegmental Metrical (AM) theory of intonational phonology, of broad focus (neutral) declarative utterances in the Spanish of three generations of Miami Cubans. No differences were found across these three generations indicating the maintenance of a robust intonational pattern for declarative utterances. The prenuclear (non-final) pitch accent is analyzed to be L*+H and the nuclear pitch accent is L+H*. This phonological analysis is similar to what has been found for many other varieties of Spanish. A high rate of deaccenting, however, was observed in conjunction with the final lexically stressed syllable. The prevalence of deaccented final stressed syllables is unique to what has been found for other Spanish varieties.

Studies have examined various factors that affect pronunciation including phonetic context, style variation, first language transfer, and experience abroad. A plethora of research has also linked motivation to higher levels of proficiency in the second language. The present study uses native speaker ratings and multiple regression analysis to investigate the relationship between motivation, cultural sensitivity, and level of instruction with perceived foreign accent. Participants include adult learners of Spanish as a foreign language from several levels of formal instruction as well as students with extensive experience abroad. Data include a brief oral interview, a questionnaire, and the Intercultural Development Inventory to measure cultural sensitivity.Pronunciation is an often underemphasized area of instruction in the foreign or second language (L2) classroom when compared to other aspects of language development. However, being able to produce the sounds of a language correctly plays a vital role in communication. Arteaga (2000, p. 342) argued that "it [is] ironic that the purpose of learning a language is to communicate, and yet if the pronunciation is too far off, you will not be understood no matter how good the grammar and how correct the words you use." Major,

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Most studies to date on the ability of English speakers to produce the Spanish approximants [β̞ ,ð̞ ,ɣ̞ ] have impressionistically looked at the stop-spirant contrast of English-speaking learners of Spanish (e.g. Zampini 1994, Díaz-Campos 2004, Face & Menke 2009), but no known study has empirically studied the degree to which these learners are able to spirantize when compared to native speakers. The current study looks at two groups of learners: one group composed of learners who had studied four semesters of university Spanish and another group composed of learners who spent 2 years abroad in a Spanish-speaking country. Intervocalic tokens of [β̞ ,ð̞ ,ɣ̞ ] were taken and were measured for degree of oral occlusion using the intensity curve in PRAAT. Additionally, a multiple regression analysis was run to determine the relationship that oral occlusion had with speech task type formality, motivational intensity, level of instruction/time abroad, phoneme type, and phoneme word position.