Perceptual errors in English connected speech: the case of Japanese learners of English
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Yo Hamada
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Kazuya Kito
Abstract
There has been a recent increase in research on aural decoding and listening comprehension. It shows that English learners exhibit difficulty in aural decoding, especially in recognizing connected speech. This study examined English learners’ aural decoding in connected speech based on the framework of Wong et al. (2021. Chinese ESL learners’ perceptual errors of English connected speech: Insights into listening comprehension. System 98. 102480) with 81 intermediate-level Japanese L2 learners who listened to and transcribed 33 sentences. Errors were analyzed from two perspectives: phonetic and lexical/syntactic. Both phonetic and lexical/syntactic sets were further classified into five categories. The result showed that Japanese English learners struggle with connected speech features at the perceptual level of their bottom-up listening skills, which corroborates with Wong et al. (2021). The results also show errors distinct to Japanese English learners, such as boundary errors. Additionally, the study shows a clear procedure for analyzing perceptual errors.
Funding source: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
Award Identifier / Grant number: JP21K00754
Acknowledgments
We would like to express our sincere appreciation to Dr. Simpson Wong for his valuable advice and assistance. We would like to thank Editage [http://www.editage.com] for editing and reviewing this manuscript for English language.
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Research ethics: This research proposal was accepted by the ethics committee of the first author.
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Author contributions: The authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this manuscript and approved its submission.
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Research funding: This research was supported by a JSPS KAKENHI Grant [JP21K00754].
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Data availability: The data supporting the findings of this study are not publicly available due to privacy concerns and participant consent agreements.
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