Pub Date : 2023-12-28DOI: 10.18778/1731-7533.21.4.06
Klára Přečková, Pavel Šturm, J. Volín
This article explores the timing of phonetic voicing in plosive-sonorant clusters in English. VOT was measured in two groups of Czech learners with different proficiency levels and a native English control group. The hypothesis was that cross-language differences in the implementation of the voicing contrast would be reflected in lower devoicing by the non-native speakers, modulated by proficiency. 24 participants read a text with plosive-sonorant clusters (such as in plan or troops). The study found that less proficient speakers exhibited smaller degrees of devoicing compared to more proficient speakers, who however did not differ from the native controls. In line with the absence of devoicing in Czech secondary-school textbooks, the results provide insight into the interplay between language proficiency and pronunciation details in L2 acquisition. The research was supported by the European Regional Development Fund-Project ‘Creativity and Adaptability as Conditions of the Success of Europe in an Interrelated World’ (No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000734). The study was created within the Charles University programme ‘Cooperatio’, scientific field Linguistics.
本文探讨了英语中质子-声母音群的语音发声时间。对两组不同水平的捷克语学习者和一个英语为母语的对照组进行了发声对比测量。我们的假设是，语音对比实施过程中的跨语言差异将反映在非母语者较低的去声上，并受熟练程度的影响。24 名参与者阅读了一篇带有plosive-sonorant 语群（如 plan 或 troops）的文章。研究发现，与母语对照组相比，母语水平较低的人表现出较小程度的去声，而母语水平较高的人则没有差异。研究结果与捷克中学教科书中不存在devoicing的情况相一致，有助于深入了解语言能力和发音细节在学习第二语言过程中的相互作用。 本研究得到了欧洲地区发展基金项目 "创造力和适应性是欧洲在相互关联的世界中取得成功的条件"（编号：CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000734）的支持。这项研究是在查尔斯大学 "Cooperatio "计划语言学科学领域内进行的。
{"title":"Language Proficiency and Sonorant Devoicing in English Plosive-Sonorant Clusters","authors":"Klára Přečková, Pavel Šturm, J. Volín","doi":"10.18778/1731-7533.21.4.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/1731-7533.21.4.06","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the timing of phonetic voicing in plosive-sonorant clusters in English. VOT was measured in two groups of Czech learners with different proficiency levels and a native English control group. The hypothesis was that cross-language differences in the implementation of the voicing contrast would be reflected in lower devoicing by the non-native speakers, modulated by proficiency. 24 participants read a text with plosive-sonorant clusters (such as in plan or troops). The study found that less proficient speakers exhibited smaller degrees of devoicing compared to more proficient speakers, who however did not differ from the native controls. In line with the absence of devoicing in Czech secondary-school textbooks, the results provide insight into the interplay between language proficiency and pronunciation details in L2 acquisition. The research was supported by the European Regional Development Fund-Project ‘Creativity and Adaptability as Conditions of the Success of Europe in an Interrelated World’ (No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000734). The study was created within the Charles University programme ‘Cooperatio’, scientific field Linguistics.","PeriodicalId":38985,"journal":{"name":"Research in Language","volume":"38 17","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139151419","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-28DOI: 10.18778/1731-7533.21.3.01
Anna Jarosz
The article focuses on advanced students’ beliefs and views related to their own pronunciation and pronunciation learning/teaching. It also presents their opinions on the university courses dedicated to phonetics and phonology of the English language. Furthermore, it analyses the students plans and ambitions for their future self-study and intentions to further develop and improve their English pronunciation. Finally, the article introduces varied and numerous research areas investigated in the current two issues of RiL and points to the significance of the most recent findings in the field.
{"title":"Theoretical and Practical Phonetic Instruction in the Eyes of Advanced Students. An Editorial to RiL Special Issue Vol. 21.3 and 21.4 on Pronunciation Research and Pronunciation Learning/Teaching in a Global EFL Perspective","authors":"Anna Jarosz","doi":"10.18778/1731-7533.21.3.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/1731-7533.21.3.01","url":null,"abstract":"The article focuses on advanced students’ beliefs and views related to their own pronunciation and pronunciation learning/teaching. It also presents their opinions on the university courses dedicated to phonetics and phonology of the English language. Furthermore, it analyses the students plans and ambitions for their future self-study and intentions to further develop and improve their English pronunciation. Finally, the article introduces varied and numerous research areas investigated in the current two issues of RiL and points to the significance of the most recent findings in the field.","PeriodicalId":38985,"journal":{"name":"Research in Language","volume":"71 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139151746","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-28DOI: 10.18778/1731-7533.21.4.03
Małgorzata Baran-Łucarz
The main goal of the study reported in this paper was to verify whether the Big Five personality traits can be considered correlates of accentedness in a setting deprived of pronunciation-focused instruction. Each trait was measured among 58 English majors in Poland, who were just beginning their education at the university, by the means of the Polish version of Goldberg’s measure, i.e. IPIP-BFM-50. The levels of the traits were correlated with the participants’ degree of accentedness assessed by 2 judges on a 9-point Likert scale with the use of a reading task. The quantitative data were supplemented by interviews with 10 participants representing high and low levels of accentedness, which allowed to diagnose their motivation, attitudes towards the sound of English, pronunciation self-perceptions, and strategies applied in autonomous learning. The quantitative data showed a weak correlation only between Openness to experience and accentedness, which was further moderated by the other above-mentioned individual learner differences. Additionally, the qualitative outcomes suggested the importance of Agreeableness, which was found to be very high or high among learners with the lowest levels of accentedness.
{"title":"Personality as a Correlate of Accentedness: The Case of Formal Setting Without Pronunciation-Focused Instruction","authors":"Małgorzata Baran-Łucarz","doi":"10.18778/1731-7533.21.4.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/1731-7533.21.4.03","url":null,"abstract":"The main goal of the study reported in this paper was to verify whether the Big Five personality traits can be considered correlates of accentedness in a setting deprived of pronunciation-focused instruction. Each trait was measured among 58 English majors in Poland, who were just beginning their education at the university, by the means of the Polish version of Goldberg’s measure, i.e. IPIP-BFM-50. The levels of the traits were correlated with the participants’ degree of accentedness assessed by 2 judges on a 9-point Likert scale with the use of a reading task. The quantitative data were supplemented by interviews with 10 participants representing high and low levels of accentedness, which allowed to diagnose their motivation, attitudes towards the sound of English, pronunciation self-perceptions, and strategies applied in autonomous learning. The quantitative data showed a weak correlation only between Openness to experience and accentedness, which was further moderated by the other above-mentioned individual learner differences. Additionally, the qualitative outcomes suggested the importance of Agreeableness, which was found to be very high or high among learners with the lowest levels of accentedness.","PeriodicalId":38985,"journal":{"name":"Research in Language","volume":"341 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139149047","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-28DOI: 10.18778/1731-7533.21.3.04
Marta A. Nowacka
This paper reports on a study in which Polish first-year university students of English, self-studied the massive open and online course (henceforth MOOC) entitled “Pronunciation in a Global World” to gain some knowledge on the fundamentals of phonetics (the notion of comprehensibility, nativeness and identity; vowels, consonants and selected suprasegmentals) and English accent variation. Its two main goals are: firstly, to examine the MOOC’s impact on the participants’ understanding of basic phonetic concepts and, secondly, to obtain the users’ assessment of this MOOC’s attractiveness and usefulness.In general, the results do not give evidence for the positive influence of the MOOC course on the students’ meta-awareness of English phonetics, since there are statistically significant differences in only three of sixty-eight questions between the experimental and control group. Nevertheless, many informants regard the course as useful (72%) and attractive (49%).Although the results do not support the hypothesis of the MOOC’s beneficial role in facilitating the understanding of English phonetics our stand is that this online training could complement classroom teaching as a form of blended learning.
{"title":"Self-Study of the MOOC English Pronunciation in a Global World: Metaphonetic Awareness and English Accent Variation","authors":"Marta A. Nowacka","doi":"10.18778/1731-7533.21.3.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/1731-7533.21.3.04","url":null,"abstract":"This paper reports on a study in which Polish first-year university students of English, self-studied the massive open and online course (henceforth MOOC) entitled “Pronunciation in a Global World” to gain some knowledge on the fundamentals of phonetics (the notion of comprehensibility, nativeness and identity; vowels, consonants and selected suprasegmentals) and English accent variation. Its two main goals are: firstly, to examine the MOOC’s impact on the participants’ understanding of basic phonetic concepts and, secondly, to obtain the users’ assessment of this MOOC’s attractiveness and usefulness.In general, the results do not give evidence for the positive influence of the MOOC course on the students’ meta-awareness of English phonetics, since there are statistically significant differences in only three of sixty-eight questions between the experimental and control group. Nevertheless, many informants regard the course as useful (72%) and attractive (49%).Although the results do not support the hypothesis of the MOOC’s beneficial role in facilitating the understanding of English phonetics our stand is that this online training could complement classroom teaching as a form of blended learning.","PeriodicalId":38985,"journal":{"name":"Research in Language","volume":"7 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139148625","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-28DOI: 10.18778/1731-7533.21.2.03
Naoki Kiyama, Yoshikata Shibuya
This study discusses the polysemy and diachronic semantic frequency shifts of the English verb run using a topic model. The increase in corpus-based research in cognitive linguistics has yielded many empirical findings on various aspects of language. However, there are still areas that have not received sufficient attention. One such area is the study of word meaning in terms of related topics and social interest. In this paper, we analyze diachronic data collected from the NOW corpus (News on Web) and argue that the polysemy of run can be described in terms of topic, and that the change in the use of the meanings that this verb has can be described in terms of a change in social interest.
本研究利用话题模型讨论了英语动词 run 的多义性和非同步语义频率变化。认知语言学领域基于语料库的研究日益增多，在语言的各个方面产生了许多实证研究成果。然而，仍有一些领域没有得到足够的重视。其中一个领域就是从相关话题和社会兴趣的角度研究词义。在本文中，我们分析了从 NOW 语料库（News on Web）中收集的对时数据，认为 run 的多义性可以用话题来描述，而这个动词所具有的意义的使用变化可以用社会兴趣的变化来描述。
{"title":"A Topic-Based Diachronic Account of the Polysemy of the English Verb ‘Run’","authors":"Naoki Kiyama, Yoshikata Shibuya","doi":"10.18778/1731-7533.21.2.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/1731-7533.21.2.03","url":null,"abstract":"This study discusses the polysemy and diachronic semantic frequency shifts of the English verb run using a topic model. The increase in corpus-based research in cognitive linguistics has yielded many empirical findings on various aspects of language. However, there are still areas that have not received sufficient attention. One such area is the study of word meaning in terms of related topics and social interest. In this paper, we analyze diachronic data collected from the NOW corpus (News on Web) and argue that the polysemy of run can be described in terms of topic, and that the change in the use of the meanings that this verb has can be described in terms of a change in social interest.","PeriodicalId":38985,"journal":{"name":"Research in Language","volume":"9 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139150208","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-28DOI: 10.18778/1731-7533.21.3.05
Loulou Kosmala, Céline Horgues, S. Scheuer
This paper offers quantitative and qualitative findings from the exploration of communication breakdowns in English tandem interactions, by adopting a multimodal perspective. It focuses on the ways in which pronunciation-induced CBs are managed by language peers in a tandem setting. This study shows cases where it was the non-native participant’s output that was the main communicative stumbling block, with a view to reporting on pronunciation-induced breakdowns. More specifically, our analyses target the ways in which CBs are signaled to the interlocutor with different multimodal cues (verbal / vocal / visual). Those pronunciation issues are dealt with in a highly collaborative manner, through multimodal communication strategies, revealing recurrent visual patterns involving different visible body articulators (i.e., the face, the trunk, and the hands) which differ according to participants’ status (native versus non-native).
{"title":"A Multimodal Study of How Pronunciation-Induced Communication Breakdowns are Managed During Tandem Interactions","authors":"Loulou Kosmala, Céline Horgues, S. Scheuer","doi":"10.18778/1731-7533.21.3.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/1731-7533.21.3.05","url":null,"abstract":"This paper offers quantitative and qualitative findings from the exploration of communication breakdowns in English tandem interactions, by adopting a multimodal perspective. It focuses on the ways in which pronunciation-induced CBs are managed by language peers in a tandem setting. This study shows cases where it was the non-native participant’s output that was the main communicative stumbling block, with a view to reporting on pronunciation-induced breakdowns. More specifically, our analyses target the ways in which CBs are signaled to the interlocutor with different multimodal cues (verbal / vocal / visual). Those pronunciation issues are dealt with in a highly collaborative manner, through multimodal communication strategies, revealing recurrent visual patterns involving different visible body articulators (i.e., the face, the trunk, and the hands) which differ according to participants’ status (native versus non-native).","PeriodicalId":38985,"journal":{"name":"Research in Language","volume":"9 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139150674","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-28DOI: 10.18778/1731-7533.21.3.06
Noémi Gyurka, Ágnes Piukovics
Pronunciation teaching is gaining more and more recognition in international contexts, however, empirical research concerning pronunciation teaching is underrepresented in the Hungarian educational context. While there are a few studies that briefly touch upon the learners’ attitudes towards pronunciation, there is limited data concerning the ways in which pronunciation could be integrated into the Hungarian English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom. Therefore, to narrow down the gap, this paper aims to investigate how international pronunciation activities could be modified when teaching Hungarian learners specifically, and how these activities could be integrated successfully into the classroom. The case study conducted involved 13 learners, who were taught by the first author of the paper as the teacher-researcher. The timeframe of the research was 11 weeks, throughout which altogether five pronunciation activities were tailored and integrated into the lessons. The results indicate that taking only methodological considerations when deciding on what feature to teach was not sufficient for successful integration. It was concluded that the learners needed to be aware of the goals of the task, its relevance to their development, and most importantly, they had to be motivated and in turn engaged, as all the factors mentioned above are prerequisites of successful integration.
{"title":"Tailoring International Pronunciation Activities for Hungarian Learners of English","authors":"Noémi Gyurka, Ágnes Piukovics","doi":"10.18778/1731-7533.21.3.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/1731-7533.21.3.06","url":null,"abstract":"Pronunciation teaching is gaining more and more recognition in international contexts, however, empirical research concerning pronunciation teaching is underrepresented in the Hungarian educational context. While there are a few studies that briefly touch upon the learners’ attitudes towards pronunciation, there is limited data concerning the ways in which pronunciation could be integrated into the Hungarian English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom. Therefore, to narrow down the gap, this paper aims to investigate how international pronunciation activities could be modified when teaching Hungarian learners specifically, and how these activities could be integrated successfully into the classroom. The case study conducted involved 13 learners, who were taught by the first author of the paper as the teacher-researcher. The timeframe of the research was 11 weeks, throughout which altogether five pronunciation activities were tailored and integrated into the lessons. The results indicate that taking only methodological considerations when deciding on what feature to teach was not sufficient for successful integration. It was concluded that the learners needed to be aware of the goals of the task, its relevance to their development, and most importantly, they had to be motivated and in turn engaged, as all the factors mentioned above are prerequisites of successful integration.","PeriodicalId":38985,"journal":{"name":"Research in Language","volume":"10 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139148430","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-28DOI: 10.18778/1731-7533.21.3.02
Miguel Del Río, Corey Miller, Ján Profant, Jennifer Drexler-Fox, Quinn Mcnamara, Nishchal Bhandari, Natalie Delworth, I. Pirkin, Miguel Jette, Shipra Chandra, Peter Ha, Ryan Westerman
Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems generalize poorly on accented speech, creating bias issues for users and providers. The phonetic and linguistic variability of accents present challenges for ASR systems in both data collection and modeling strategies. We present two promising approaches to accented speech recognition— custom vocabulary and multilingual modeling— and highlight key challenges in the space. Among these, lack of a standard benchmark makes research and comparison difficult. We address this with a novel corpus of accented speech: Earnings-22, A 125 file, 119 hour corpus of English-language earnings calls gathered from global companies. We compare commercial models showing variation in performance when taking country of origin into consideration and demonstrate targeted improvements using the methods we introduce.
{"title":"Accents in Speech Recognition through the Lens of a World Englishes Evaluation Set","authors":"Miguel Del Río, Corey Miller, Ján Profant, Jennifer Drexler-Fox, Quinn Mcnamara, Nishchal Bhandari, Natalie Delworth, I. Pirkin, Miguel Jette, Shipra Chandra, Peter Ha, Ryan Westerman","doi":"10.18778/1731-7533.21.3.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/1731-7533.21.3.02","url":null,"abstract":"Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems generalize poorly on accented speech, creating bias issues for users and providers. The phonetic and linguistic variability of accents present challenges for ASR systems in both data collection and modeling strategies. We present two promising approaches to accented speech recognition— custom vocabulary and multilingual modeling— and highlight key challenges in the space. Among these, lack of a standard benchmark makes research and comparison difficult. We address this with a novel corpus of accented speech: Earnings-22, A 125 file, 119 hour corpus of English-language earnings calls gathered from global companies. We compare commercial models showing variation in performance when taking country of origin into consideration and demonstrate targeted improvements using the methods we introduce.","PeriodicalId":38985,"journal":{"name":"Research in Language","volume":"35 5‐6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139149334","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-28DOI: 10.18778/1731-7533.21.4.01
Esther Gómez Lacabex, Hanne Roothooft
The present study explored pronunciation views, learning actions and anxiety in two differentiated English learner groups: one group which was studying English in an engineering degree and another group enrolled in an English major degree. The results from a questionnaire and focus group sessions revealed that the groups share some views such as a wish to improve their English pronunciation and adherence to native pronunciation references as well as pronunciation learning actions such as watching series or talking to native speakers. However, we also observed significant differences between the groups as the English major students tended to view pronunciation learning as a discipline, while the engineering students saw it as a communicative skill. The English majors also exhibited more pronunciation anxiety, specifically fear of ridicule and worry of making mistakes. They also revealed more anxiety-related themes in the focus group discussions such as worry about their pronunciation, pronunciation shame or unease because they do not know how to pronounce a word or cannot understand. Finally, the English major group was also more demanding of lecturers’ accurate pronunciation. These results suggest that differences regarding English pronunciation anxiety between different learner profiles may need to be considered during their English language learning progress.
{"title":"Pronunciation Anxiety, Pronunciation-Related Views and Pronunciation Learning Actions of EMI and English Major Students","authors":"Esther Gómez Lacabex, Hanne Roothooft","doi":"10.18778/1731-7533.21.4.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/1731-7533.21.4.01","url":null,"abstract":"The present study explored pronunciation views, learning actions and anxiety in two differentiated English learner groups: one group which was studying English in an engineering degree and another group enrolled in an English major degree. The results from a questionnaire and focus group sessions revealed that the groups share some views such as a wish to improve their English pronunciation and adherence to native pronunciation references as well as pronunciation learning actions such as watching series or talking to native speakers. However, we also observed significant differences between the groups as the English major students tended to view pronunciation learning as a discipline, while the engineering students saw it as a communicative skill. The English majors also exhibited more pronunciation anxiety, specifically fear of ridicule and worry of making mistakes. They also revealed more anxiety-related themes in the focus group discussions such as worry about their pronunciation, pronunciation shame or unease because they do not know how to pronounce a word or cannot understand. Finally, the English major group was also more demanding of lecturers’ accurate pronunciation. These results suggest that differences regarding English pronunciation anxiety between different learner profiles may need to be considered during their English language learning progress.","PeriodicalId":38985,"journal":{"name":"Research in Language","volume":"341 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139152196","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-28DOI: 10.18778/1731-7533.21.4.05
Geoffrey Schwartz, Ewelina Wojtkowiak
According to the Speech Learning Model (Flege 1995), successful L2 phonological acquisition is facilitated by the formation of new phonetic categories in the L2. However, category formation may be hindered by equivalence classification, wherein speakers perceptually merge L1 and L2 sounds. This study examines L1 Polish learners of English, including a phonetic parameter that has received minimal attention: affrication of /tr-dr/ clusters in English. Two groups of speakers, comprising B1 level and C2 level learners, produced word lists containing both initial /tr-dr/ clusters, as well as singleton voiced stops /b, d, g/. The results revealed an asymmetry: both groups failed to suppress pre-voicing in /b, d, g/, but were successful in producing affricated clusters. A new category has therefore been formed for the clusters, but not for the singleton stops. Phonological implications of this finding are discussed.
{"title":"Asymmetrical Equivalence Classification – Cluster Affrication vs. Lenis Stops in the Speech of Polish Learners of English","authors":"Geoffrey Schwartz, Ewelina Wojtkowiak","doi":"10.18778/1731-7533.21.4.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/1731-7533.21.4.05","url":null,"abstract":"According to the Speech Learning Model (Flege 1995), successful L2 phonological acquisition is facilitated by the formation of new phonetic categories in the L2. However, category formation may be hindered by equivalence classification, wherein speakers perceptually merge L1 and L2 sounds. This study examines L1 Polish learners of English, including a phonetic parameter that has received minimal attention: affrication of /tr-dr/ clusters in English. Two groups of speakers, comprising B1 level and C2 level learners, produced word lists containing both initial /tr-dr/ clusters, as well as singleton voiced stops /b, d, g/. The results revealed an asymmetry: both groups failed to suppress pre-voicing in /b, d, g/, but were successful in producing affricated clusters. A new category has therefore been formed for the clusters, but not for the singleton stops. Phonological implications of this finding are discussed.","PeriodicalId":38985,"journal":{"name":"Research in Language","volume":"346 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139152049","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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