The effect of visual cues in the perception of nonnative contrasts

Denise Cristina Kluge

doi:10.5216/sig.v22i2.13608

Abstract

This article reviews and discusses some of the factors that may affect anaccurate identification of second language sounds as well as two currentmodels of speech perception: the Speech learning Model and the NativeLanguage Magnet. Then, this article reviews and discusses some studies thatinvestigate the effect of visual cues in the perception of nonnative contrasts bysecond language learners, specially the ones investigating the perception ofBrazilian learners of English (Kluge, Reis, Nobre-Oliveira & Bettoni-Techio,2009; Kluge, 2009). In general, the studies show the importance of visual inputin the perception of nonnative contrasts, especially in the perception of thevisually distinctive ones.

Highlights

Many studies related to the perception of second language (L2) sounds has discussed the influence of the native language (L1) on accurate percetion of the L2 (Flege, 1993, 1995; Wode, 1995; Best, 1995; Iverson & Kuhl, 1995)
Results showed that some other stimuli, such as auditory [gaga] and visual [baba], was perceived by the participants as [gabga] or [bagba], combining both the auditory and the visual stimuli. These results found by McGurk and MacDonald (1976) suggest that information from auditory and visual modalities are integrated and influence speech perception
Consideration of the differences in the way the word-final nasal consonants are pronounced in English and Brazilian Portuguese (BP) is very important to the understanding of the difficulties that the Brazilian learners of English may find in the identification of English word-final nasal consonants /m/ and /n/. Considering these differences between the realization of word-final nasals in English and in BP as well as some of the claims made by the Speech Learning Model which were reviewed in this article, one could expect that Brazilian learners of English would struggle to identify the phonetic dissimilarities between L1 and L2 sounds; and the mechanism of equivalence classification may block accurate perception of the nasals in the L2

Summary

Introduction

Many studies related to the perception of second language (L2) sounds has discussed the influence of the native language (L1) on accurate percetion of the L2 (Flege, 1993, 1995; Wode, 1995; Best, 1995; Iverson & Kuhl, 1995). To investigate the effect of visual cues in the identification of English contrasts by Brazilian EFL learners, the visually distinctive contrast chosen by Kluge and her colleagues in both studies was the word-final nasals /m/ (bilabial) and /n/ (alveolar).

Results

Conclusion