Aptitude, Experience, and Second Language Pronunciation Proficiency Development in Classroom Settings

Abstract

The current study longitudinally examined the influence of aptitude on second language (L2) pronunciation development when 40 firstyear Japanese university students engaged in practice activities inside and outside English-as-a-Foreign-Language classrooms over one academic year. Spontaneous speech samples were elicited at the beginning, middle and end points of the project, analyzed for global, segmental, syllabic, prosodic and temporal aspects of L2 pronunciation, and linked to their aptitude and experience profiles. Results indicated that the participants generally enhanced the global comprehensibility of their speech (via reducing vowel insertion errors in complex syllables) as a function of increased classroom experience during their first semester, and explicit learning aptitude (associative memory, phonemic coding) appeared to help certain learners further enhance their pronunciation proficiency through the development of fluency and prosody. In the second semester, incidental learning ability (sound sequence recognition) was shown to be a significant predictor of the extent to which certain learners continued to improve and ultimately attain advanced-level L2 comprehensibility, largely thanks to improved segmental accuracy.Adult second language acquisition (SLA) is a multifaceted phenomenon whose process and product are greatly affected not only by factors related to experience (e.g., how second language [L2] learners have practiced the target language), but also by those which are learner-internal (e.g., to what extent they are cognitively and socially adept at L2 pronunciation learning). Adopting a longitudinal approach (i.e., where learners engaged in practice activities inside and outside English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) classrooms over one academic year), the current study examined how 40 college-level Japanese students with various aptitude scores (in terms of sound sequence recognition, phonemic coding, and associative memory) could improve the global 2 Kazuya Saito, Yui Suzukida and Hui Sun (comprehensibility), segmental (consonant/vowel errors), syllabic (schwa vowel insertion), prosodic (wrong/missing stress) and temporal (breakdown, speed, fluency) dimensions of their L2 pronunciation. BACKGROUND

Explicit and implicit aptitude effects on second language speech learning: Scrutinizing segmental and suprasegmental sensitivity and performance via behavioural and neurophysiological measures

“…Very few studies have examined the impact of these factors on the acquisition of L2 adult learners' phonological skills while speaking spontaneously via a comprehensive set of aptitude and speech measures (cf. Saito, Suzukida & Sun, 2018). Furthermore, very few studies have used a combination of both behavioural and neurophysiological metrics.…”

“…Our argument here is harmonious with recent theoretical discussion in the L2 aptitude literature on the importance of a combination of explicit and implicit learning. Such multifaceted cognition can help L2 learners make the most of any given input/output opportunities, which is believed to be a necessary condition for the attainment of high-level L2 proficiency (Doughty, Campbell, Mislevy, Bunting, Bowles & Koeth, 2010;Linck et al, 2013;Saito et al, 2018;Skehan, 2016).…”

“…To unravel the relative impacts of explicit and implicit aptitude on L2 pronunciation learning, future studies can adopt longitudinal, pre-andposttest-designs (cf. Saito et al, 2018). Such studies will shed light on whether and to what degree high explicit and implicit aptitude learners can differentially benefit from two essentially different L2 learning conditions -(a) naturalistic immersion with ample opportunities to use the L2 meaningfully with native and non-native speakers on a regular basis; vs. (b) form-focused lessons in foreign language settings without many conversational opportunities outside of the classroom.…”

To What Extent Does Long‐Term Foreign Language Education Help Improve Spoken Second Language Lexical Proficiency?

“…Indeed, the loadings of the experience factors were unclear/problematic, particularly for Factors 3 and 4 (past and recent extra experience). To this end, future studies may need to adopt not only a cross‐sectional but also a longitudinal design to track the complex portraits of FL experience over time (e.g., Riney & Flege, ; Saito, ; Saito, Suzukida, & Sun, ).…”

The role of aptitude in second language segmental learning: The case of Japanese learners’ English /ɹ/ pronunciation attainment in classroom settings

“…L2 learners’ sequence recognition performance has been found to demonstrate strong associations with the degree of their learning success in certain contexts, where both intentional and incidental learning processes play a key role. These instances include the final quality of early bilinguals’ L2 morpshosyntax performance in naturalistic settings (Granena, 2013), and the longitudinal development of classroom L2 learners’ oral proficiency when they engaged in both form-oriented and content-based instruction over time (Saito, Suzukida, & Sun, 2018).…”