Phonetics in Second Language Acquisition: An Acoustic Study of Fluency in Adult Learners of Spanish

Abstract

A phonetic definition of fluency in natural discourse makes it possible to develop a set of procedures to measure fluency empirically. An analysis of changes in oral communication skills of five American adult learners provides an illustration of how these procedures work. These adults participated in a five-week study abroad program in Spanish. Their overall language proficiency before their departure ranged from Intermediate Low to Advanced, on the ACTFL's OPI scale. Four participants moved to higher intra-major levels, but not to higher inter-major levels. The subjective analysis of the recordings shows that most of these changes are reflected in vocabulary acquisition and more ease in discourse interaction of the four participants. According to the procedures developed in the present analysis, only two participants improved their pronunciation. The results using the present procedures correlate with OPI results.

The effect of Study Abroad (SA) on written performance

“…In particular, studies should focus on bilinguals and multilinguals' outcomes and responses to the SA period, as they might be different from those of monolinguals (see Cook 2002;Pérez-Vidal, Juan-Garau and Bel 2008). Simões (1996) suggests a possible effect of differing language teaching traditions in both types of environments. To bridge this gap, the current study sets out to describe and compare the effects of FI and SA periods on the progress in written development of advanced-level Catalan/Spanish EFL undergraduate students.…”

Second Language Spanish Vowel Production: An Acoustic Analysis

“…The importance of the acquisition of the Spanish vowel system is hinted at in both Elliot (1997) and Simões (1996), but few studies directly address L2 acquisition of the Spanish vowel system. In a classic contrastive analysis, Stockwell & Bowen (1965) predicted that Spanish vowels under weak stress would be the most problematic for native English speakers acquiring the Spanish sound system given the extensive centralization of unstressed vowels in English and the impermissibility of centralization in Spanish.…”

“…Flege 1997, Flege, MacKay & Meador 1999and Munro 1993), yet relatively little research has been carried out to investigate the acquisition of the Spanish vocalic system by first language (L1) speakers of English. Previous work has relied primarily on impressionistic analysis techniques and focused on beginning and intermediate level learners (Elliot 1997, Hammerly 1982and Simões 1996; studies that examine the vowel productions of L2 learners of Spanish at different levels of proficiency or that use acoustic methods for analysis are lacking from the literature. By including more advanced groups of learners and employing more precise analysis techniques, a more complete understanding of the interlanguage phonological system of adult L2 learners of Spanish can be developed.…”

Contrastive Study between Pronunciation Chinese L1 and English L2 from the Perspective of Interference Based on Observations in Genuine Teaching Contexts

“…In recent years, there has been renewed interest in pronunciation. Pronunciation research has been dominated by a strong interest in quantitative investigations of the development of learners' proficiency as a result of inhabiting different learning environments (e.g., Díaz-Campos, 2004;O'Brien, 2003O'Brien, , 2004Simões, 1996;Stevens, 2000) and teaching strategies by measuring specific phonetic elements according to native-speaker norms (e.g., D. Macdonald, Yule, & Powers, 1994). Few, if any, studies have thus far investigated the teaching and learning of pronunciation from the perspective of interference between L1 and L2.…”