Perceptual training with native Japanese speakers on various L2 sounds

Abstract

It has been found that adults can more robustly acquire segments in a second language (L2) with identification training which uses highly varied training stimuli, i.e., natural tokens from multiple talkers in multiple phonetic contexts. This approach has been applied systematically in cross-language training studies in which Japanese speakers were trained to acquire AE /r/ and /l/ [Lively et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 96, 2076–2087 (1994)] as well as AE/v̥, æ, ʌ/ [Strange and Akahane-Yamada, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 102, 3137(A) (1997)]. The current set of experiments expanded this line of research by testing whether the same procedure would be effective in training other consonants (/b/–/v/, /s/–/θ/ and /z/–/ð/) and vowels (11 AE vowels). With both consonants and vowels, the previous results were replicated; subjects showed significant improvement from pretest to posttest and showed generalization to an untrained talker. In the vowel training study, transfer of training across speaking style was further examined. Subjects were trained to distinguish vowels in CVC syllables in a carrier sentence context, and were then tested in both sentence and citation contexts. Interestingly, the improvements were significant for sentence contexts but not for citation. Taken together, these studies further our understanding of the complexities of L2 learning and training.