The relationship between auditory discrimination and oral production of Spanish sounds in children and adults

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the question of age in relation to second-language learning. Specific variables investigated were the auditory discrimination and oral production of Spanish sounds. Two test were constructed: (1) The auditory discrimination test used minimal pairs of Spanish sounds, and (2) the oral production test used words that differed in only one sound. Both tests were given individually to a group of randomly chosen English monolingual speakers. A group of children (1 st-graders) and a group of adults (12th-graders) were tested to determine if both tests taken together would show one group to have a higher foreign language aptitude than the other group. While it was hypothesized that children would perform better than adults, the multivariate analysis of variance indicated that, with both tests taken together, adults were superior in auditory discrimination and oral production, supporting the idea that adults because of their cognitive advantage and maturity are more efficient and successful in these two aspects of foreign-language learning. Children did not exhibit the facility that early-foreign-language-learning advocates have postulated.