The effect of phonetic production training with visual feedback on the perception and production of foreign speech sounds

Abstract

Second-language learners often experience major difficulties in producing non-native speech sounds. This paper introduces a training method that uses a real-time analysis of the acoustic properties of vowels produced by non-native speakers to provide them with immediate, trial-bytrial visual feedback about their articulation alongside that of the same vowels produced by native speakers. The Mahalanobis acoustic distance between non-native productions and target native acoustic spaces was used to assess L2 production accuracy. The experiment shows that 1 h of training per vowel improves the production of four non-native Danish vowels: the learners' productions were closer to the corresponding Danish target vowels after training. The production performance of a control group remained unchanged. Comparisons of pre-and post-training vowel discrimination performance in the experimental group showed improvements in perception. Correlational analyses of training-related changes in production and perception revealed no relationship. These results suggest, first, that this training method is effective in improving nonnative vowel production. Second, training purely on production improves perception. Finally, it appears that improvements in production and perception do not systematically progress at equal rates within individuals.

Learning to Comprehend Foreign‐Accented Speech by Means of Production and Listening Training

“…A comparison of the pre‐ and posttest revealed sound learning for the perception group, but not for the perception+production group. With the addition of feedback on concrete acoustic properties of the productions during training, however, Kartushina, Hervais‐Adelman, Frauenfelder, and Golestani () did find in a similar phoneme discrimination study that production training can be helpful for learning to discriminate L2 sounds.…”

Feature Acquisition in Second Language Phonetic Development: Evidence From Phonetic Training

“…Kartushina et al. (), in their review of the literature, differentiated between indirect and direct visual feedback. Indirect visual feedback, the focus of this study, consists of providing raw or abstracted acoustic representations.…”

Talker and Acoustic Variability in Learning to Produce Nonnative Sounds: Evidence from Articulatory Training

“…No study to date has specifically addressed the mechanism underlying the relationship between sound‐production accuracy and its variability. Nevertheless, the results of previous studies showing (a) high correlations between production accuracy and variability in L2 speakers (Kartushina & Frauenfelder, ) and novice learners (Kartushina et al., ), (b) a decrease in variability as a result of improvements in production and perception accuracy (Kartushina et al., , ), and (c) a relationship between these two production measures and categorical perception in the L1 (Franken et al., ; Perkell et al., ) suggest that gains in accuracy and compactness in the multiple‐talker group might be mediated by more accurate sound perception.…”

“…Such processing might lead to an establishment of more accurate auditory targets, which, in turn, might tune the production, leading to more compact/stable articulatory realizations. Other production‐training studies have shown that training‐related improvements in production were accompanied by a reduction in production variability and also led to small improvements in the perception of the trained sounds (Kartushina et al., ). The results of the current study suggest that hearing multiple talkers during production training encourages participants to disregard irrelevant acoustic information (here, variability in pitch or between‐talker variability) and to focus on the relevant phonetic features (here, F1 and F2), which allows for the two trained categories to be distinguished.…”

“…Previous production‐training studies have shown that 1 hour of training following this technique improves learners’ pronunciation of nonnative vowels by 17–19% (Kartushina et al., , ). In addition, articulatory training with feedback appears to enhance learners’ perception of the trained sounds (Kartushina et al., ) and their articulatory compactness (which is the inverse of variability), with greater enhancements in compactness for those vowels that had more training‐related improvements in production accuracy (Kartushina et al., ).…”