The current study longitudinally examined the influence of aptitude on second language (L2) pronunciation development when 40 firstyear Japanese university students engaged in practice activities inside and outside English-as-a-Foreign-Language classrooms over one academic year. Spontaneous speech samples were elicited at the beginning, middle and end points of the project, analyzed for global, segmental, syllabic, prosodic and temporal aspects of L2 pronunciation, and linked to their aptitude and experience profiles. Results indicated that the participants generally enhanced the global comprehensibility of their speech (via reducing vowel insertion errors in complex syllables) as a function of increased classroom experience during their first semester, and explicit learning aptitude (associative memory, phonemic coding) appeared to help certain learners further enhance their pronunciation proficiency through the development of fluency and prosody. In the second semester, incidental learning ability (sound sequence recognition) was shown to be a significant predictor of the extent to which certain learners continued to improve and ultimately attain advanced-level L2 comprehensibility, largely thanks to improved segmental accuracy.Adult second language acquisition (SLA) is a multifaceted phenomenon whose process and product are greatly affected not only by factors related to experience (e.g., how second language [L2] learners have practiced the target language), but also by those which are learner-internal (e.g., to what extent they are cognitively and socially adept at L2 pronunciation learning). Adopting a longitudinal approach (i.e., where learners engaged in practice activities inside and outside English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) classrooms over one academic year), the current study examined how 40 college-level Japanese students with various aptitude scores (in terms of sound sequence recognition, phonemic coding, and associative memory) could improve the global 2 Kazuya Saito, Yui Suzukida and Hui Sun (comprehensibility), segmental (consonant/vowel errors), syllabic (schwa vowel insertion), prosodic (wrong/missing stress) and temporal (breakdown, speed, fluency) dimensions of their L2 pronunciation. BACKGROUND
To date, a growing number of studies have shown that domain‐general auditory processing, which prior work has linked to L1 acquisition, could explain various dimensions of naturalistic L2 speech proficiency. The current study examined the generalizability of this topic to L2 speech learning in classroom settings. The spontaneous speech samples of 39 Vietnamese English‐as‐a‐foreign‐language learners were analyzed for fluent and accurate use of pronunciation and lexicogrammar and linked to a range of variables in their auditory processing profiles. The results identified moderate‐to‐strong correlations between the participants’ accurate use of lexicogrammar and audio‐motor sequence integration scores (i.e., the ability to reproduce melodic/rhythmic information). However, the relationship between phonological proficiency and auditory acuity (i.e., the ability to encode acoustic details of sounds) was nonsignificant. Although the findings support the audition‐acquisition link to classroom L2 speech learning to some degree, they only suggest that this link is robust for the acquisition of lexicogrammar information.
Following the trends established in psychology and emerging in L2 research, we explain our support for an Open Science approach in this paper (i.e., developing, analyzing and sharing datasets) as a way to answer controversial and complex questions in applied linguistics. We illustrate this with a focus on a frequently debated question, what underlies individual differences in the dynamic system of post-pubertal L2 speech learning? We provide a detailed description of our dataset which consists of spontaneous speech samples, elicited from 110 late L2 speakers in the UK with diverse linguistic, experiential and sociopsychological backgrounds, rated by ten L1 English listeners for comprehensibility and nativelikeness. We explain how we examined the source of individual differences by linking different levels of L2 speech performance to a range of learner-extrinsic and intrinsic variables related to first language backgrounds, age, experience, motivation, awareness, and attitudes using a series of factor and Bayesian mixed-effects ordinal regression analyses. We conclude with a range of suggestions for the fields of applied linguistics and SLA, including the use of Bayesian methods in analyzing multivariate, multifactorial data of this kind, and advocating for publicly available datasets. In keeping with recommendations for increasing openness of the field, we invite readers to rethink and redo our analyses and interpretations from multiple angles by making our dataset and coding publicly available as part of our 40th anniversary ARAL article.
Building up on Munro and Derwing, the current study set out to re-examine and generalize the Functional Load (FL) principle (Brown, 1988) as a tool to identify a set of relatively crucial segmental features for successful understanding in L2 communication. In Experiment 1, 40 Japanese learners of English in English-as-Foreign-Language settings engaged in a semi-structured task (i.e. timed picture description). Their speech was assessed by native speaking raters for overall comprehensibility (ease of understanding); and then coded for the number of high vs. low FL segmental substitution errors according to the FL principle. The results showed that it was only high FL consonant substitutions (e.g. mispronunciation of /l/ as /r/ or /v/ as /b/) that negatively impacted on native listeners’ comprehensibility judgments. In Experiment 2, 40 Japanese learners of English with a wide range of immersion experience in English-speaking countries participated. The results replicated the significant impact of high FL consonant substitutions as observed in Experiment 1. Taken together, this study suggests that the FL principle may greatly help teachers and students prioritize communicatively important segmental features, a crucial step towards improving L2 oral proficiency in an effective and efficient way.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.