When the Easy Becomes Difficult : Factors Affecting the Acquisition of the English /iː/-/ɪ/ Contrast
Cebrian, Juli (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Filologia Anglesa i de Germanística)
Gorba, Celia (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Filologia Anglesa i de Germanística)
Gavaldà Ferre, Nuria (Universidad Internacional de la Rioja. Facultad de Educación)

Data:	2021
Resum:	The degree of similarity between the sounds of a speaker's first and second language (L1 and L2) is believed to determine the likelihood of accurate perception and production of the L2 sounds. This paper explores the relationship between cross-linguistic similarity and the perception and production of a subset of English vowels, including the highly productive /iː/-/ɪ/ contrast (as in "beat" vs. "bit"), by a group of Spanish/Catalan native speakers learning English as an L2. The learners' ability to identify, discriminate and produce the English vowels accurately was contrasted with their cross-linguistic perceived similarity judgements. The results showed that L2 perception and production accuracy was not always predicted from patterns of cross-language similarity, particularly regarding the difficulty distinguishing /iː/ and /ɪ/. Possible explanations may involve the way the L2 /iː/ and /ɪ/ categories interact, the effect of non-native acoustic cue reliance, and the roles of orthography and language instruction.
Ajuts:	Agencia Estatal de Investigación FFI2017-88016-P Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2017/SGR-34
Drets:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Llengua:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; Versió publicada
Matèria:	Vowel contrast ; L2 perception ; L2 production ; Cross-linguistic similarity ; Individual variation
Publicat a:	Frontiers in Communication, Volume 6 (June 2021) , ISSN 2297-900X

DOI: 10.3389/fcomm.2021.660917

17 p, 1.1 MB

El registre apareix a les col·leccions:
Articles > Articles publicats