L2 speech learning in adulthood and phonological short-term memory
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Cristina Aliaga-García
,
Joan C. Mora
Abstract
The aim of the present study is to extend research on individual differences in cognitive ability and second language acquisition by exploring the relationship between PSTM and L2 speech learning in advanced EFL learners. The participants (N=60) were a subset of a larger group of Catalan-Spanish bilingual EFL learners participating in 10 60-minute high-variability phonetic training sessions on the perception of the 11 British English monophthongs. Perceptual accuracy was assessed at pre- and post-test through categorization and discrimination tasks based on 5 monophthongal vowels (/i: ɪ æ ʌ ɑ:/). PSTM capacity measures were obtained at post-test using a SNWR task consisting of CVC Catalan nonwords on the basis of which participants were assigned to either low or high PSTM capacity groups The high PSTM group was found to obtain higher accuracy scores and greater perceptual accuracy gains than the low PSTM group. These results suggest that PSTM may play a role in L2 speech learning and may be involved in learners’ ability to successfully form phonetic categories for L2 sounds.
© School of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland, 2011
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- Special issue on the acquisition of second language speech: Editors’ preface
- L2 speech learning in adulthood and phonological short-term memory
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- Phonological aspects of the Longman communication 3000
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- Interaction of intrinsic vowel and consonant durational correlates with foreigner directed speech
- L2 dialect acquisition of German vowels: The case of Northern German and Austrian dialects
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