Relation of perception training to production of codas in English as a second language

Abstract

A preliminary study has been conducted to discover whether moderate amounts of speech perception training improve accurate production when production is not trained. The study recruited one group of 8 Spanish adults who had resided less than 10 years in the USA. A set of 13 word-final English consonants were 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 one hour mostly to the VC syllables and occasionally sentences (recordings being taken from multiple talkers). Results show: (1) With three hours training Spanish listeners' perception improved significantly across the 13 codas, with more improvement on consonant clusters than on singletons; (2) for those consonants not already accurately produced, 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 perception training only can lead to improved 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. © 2009 Acoustical Society of America.