Abstract
A preliminary study has been conducted to discover whether moderate amounts of speech perception training improve accurate production even though production is not trained. The study recruited one group of eight Spanish adults who had resided less than 10 years in the USA. A set of 13 word-final English consonants was selected for training from a SPATS software module. On days 1 and 5, the group participated in both perception and production tasks with the 13 codas (pre- and post-tests). On days 2–4, the group trained with feedback for 1 h mostly with VC syllables and occasionally with sentences (speech recorded from multiple talkers). Results show: (1) with 3 h training, Spanish listeners’ perception improved significantly across the 13 codas, with greater improvement on consonant clusters than on singletons; (2) for consonants not accurately produced in the pretest, many substantially improved after only perception training; (3) several consonants with large gains in perception also showed the large improvements in production. The results from this study suggest that training only with perception can improve speech production. Experience with this protocol lays the groundwork for a series of studies to examine how perception and production are linked in learning a new language.
Published Version
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call