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

Rojczyk, Arkadiusz

doi:10.2478/v10015-010-0008-3

Cited by 5 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 39 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…However, as sound systems of various languages differ greatly, this task frequently turns out to be very difficult one, especially for adult learners (e.g. Rojczyk, 2009;Rojczyk, 2010a), and some learners never master the target language's pronunciation at the satisfactory level (Littlewood, 1994).…”

Section: Learning An L2 Phonetic Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It should be added that phonetic similarity and dissimilarity are defined in terms of the acoustic and articulatory characteristics of the linguistically relevant speech sounds. The attainment of native-like production and perception of given second language sounds is then connected to the phonetic distance between L1 and L2 segments (Flege, 1995;Rojczyk, 2010a). According to the SLM, L2 learners will be less successful in learning those L2 sounds which are regarded as being similar to L1 sounds as the similarity shall block the formation of a new phonetic category by means of the equivalence classification.…”

Section: Learning An L2 Phonetic Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to the SLM, L2 learners will be less successful in learning those L2 sounds which are regarded as being similar to L1 sounds as the similarity shall block the formation of a new phonetic category by means of the equivalence classification. On the contrary, those L2 sounds which are perceived as being different or new in terms of L1 categories, will encourage L2 learners to create new L2 categories (Flege, 1995;Rojczyk, 2010a). Certainly that stands in contradiction to popular beliefs concerning L2 learning shared by laypeople.…”

Section: Learning An L2 Phonetic Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…What needs to be highlighted is the fact that the assessment of students' production was based on auditory impressions and not on acoustic measurements in that study. Rojczyk (2010aRojczyk ( , 2010b, on the other hand, made a study focusing on examining production of English vowels by advanced Polish learners of English. The subjects consisted of 43 third-year students recruited at the Institute of English, University of Silesia (31 females and 12 males).…”

Section: Previous Research On Foreign Vowel Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is abundance of studies examining L2 learners' successes and failures in production of L1 and L2 vowels (e.g. Flege, 1992;Nowacka, 2010;Rojczyk, 2010a). Usually such projects show how difficult it is for L2 learners to separate "old" and "new" vowel categories.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Production of L3 Vowels: Is it Possible to Separate Them From L1 and L2 Sounds?

Lipińska

2015

RiL

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

It is incontrovertible that acquisition of a sound system of a second language is always a complex phenomenon and presents a great challenge for L2 learners (e.g. Rojczyk, 2010a). There are numerous studies (e.g. Nowacka, 2010; Flege, 1991) which show that L2 learners whose first language has a scarce number of sounds, have problems to distinguish L2 sound categories and tend to apply their L1 segments to new contexts. It may be easily detectable in the case of vowels. There is abundance of studies examining L2 learners’ successes and failures in production of L1 and L2 vowels (e.g. Flege, 1992; Nowacka, 2010; Rojczyk, 2010a). Usually such projects show how difficult it is for L2 learners to separate “old” and “new” vowel categories. However, the situation becomes much more complicated when we think of third language (L3) production. While in the case of L2 segmental production the number of factors affecting L2 sounds is rather limited (either interference from learners’ L1 or some kind of L2 intralingual influence), in the case of L3 segmental production we may encounter L1®L3, L2®L3 or L3 intralingual interference. This makes separation of L3 sounds a much more complex process. The aim of this study is to examine whether speakers of L1 Polish, L2 English and L3 German are able to separate new, L3 vowel categories from their native and L2 categories. Being a part of a larger project, this time the focus is on German /oe/. This vowel was chosen since it is regarded as especially difficult for Polish learners of German and it is frequently substituted with some other sounds. A group of English philology (Polish-English-German translation and interpretation programme) students was chosen to participate in this project. They were advanced speakers of English who did not encounter any difficulties in communication with native speakers of this language and upperintermediate users of German. They had been taught both English and German pronunciation/practical phonetics during their studies at the University of Silesia. The subjects were asked to produce words containing analysed vowels, namely: P /u/, P /ɔ/, P /ɛ/, E /uː/, E /ɔː/ and G /oe/. All examined vowels were embedded in a /bVt/ context. The target /bVt/ words were then embedded in carrier sentences I said /bVt/ this time in English, Ich sag’ /bVt/ diesmal in German and Mówię /bVt/ teraz in Polish, in a non-final position. The sentences were presented to subjects on a computer screen and the produced chunks were stored in a notebook’s memory as .wav files ready for inspection. The Praat 5.3.12 speech-analysis software package (Boersma, 2001) was used to scroll through the audio files in order to locate an onset and offset of target vowels, measure the F1 and F2 frequencies and plot vowels on the plane. All analyses were also performed using Praat. The obtained results shed new light on L3 segmental production and L1 and L2 interference.

show abstract

Section: Learning An L2 Phonetic Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Learning An L2 Phonetic Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Learning An L2 Phonetic Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Previous Research On Foreign Vowel Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Production of L3 Vowels: Is it Possible to Separate Them From L1 and L2 Sounds?

Lipińska

2015

RiL

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Successful second language learning is tied to robust domain-general auditory processing and stable neural representation of sound

2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

There is a great deal of individual variability in outcome in second language learning, the sources of which are still poorly understood. We hypothesized that individual differences in auditory processing may account for some variability in second language learning. We tested this hypothesis by examining psychoacoustic thresholds, auditory-motor temporal integration, and auditory neural encoding in adult native Polish speakers living in the UK. We found that precise English vowel perception and accurate English grammatical judgment were linked to lower psychoacoustic thresholds, better auditory-motor integration, and more consistent frequency-following responses to sound. Psychoacoustic thresholds and neural sound encoding explained independent variance in vowel perception, suggesting that they are dissociable indexes of sound processing. These results suggest that individual differences in second language acquisition success stem at least in part from domain-general difficulties with auditory perception, and that auditory training could help facilitate language learning in some individuals with specific auditory impairments.

show abstract

Vowel dynamics in the acquisition of L2 English – an acoustic study of L1 Polish learners

Schwartz

Kaźmierski

2019

Language Acquisition

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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

Cited by 5 publications

References 39 publications

Production of L3 Vowels: Is it Possible to Separate Them From L1 and L2 Sounds?

Production of L3 Vowels: Is it Possible to Separate Them From L1 and L2 Sounds?

Successful second language learning is tied to robust domain-general auditory processing and stable neural representation of sound

Vowel dynamics in the acquisition of L2 English – an acoustic study of L1 Polish learners

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About