Perception of English vowels and use of visual cues by learners of English and English native speakers.

Abstract

English vowels may be difficult to discriminate for many learners of English (L2 learners). Research in L2 speech perception has shown that the use of visual cues improves speech perception, at least for visually-salient contrasts. This study investigated the use of visual cues in the perception of English vowels by L2 Advanced learners (Spanish native speakers) and English native speakers (ENS). 37 L2 learners and 20 ENS were given a vowel test that presented real CVC words in audio (A), audiovisual (AV) and video-alone (V) mode. The A and AV conditions were presented in noise (-10 dB SNR) to ENS and in quiet to L2 learners. For ENS, identification rates were significantly higher in AV than in A condition, suggesting there were visual cues to vowel identity. For L2 learners, A scores were significantly lower than for ENS, and AV scores did not differ significantly from results in A mode. This suggests low sensitivity to visual cues to vowel identification, though L2 learners achieved better than chance scores when forced to attend to visual information in the V mode. These results support previous findings of relatively poor sensitivity to visual cues to phoneme identity in L2 learners.