The Production of English Aspirated Stops in Foreign Language Acquisition

Abstract

This study examines the effect of teaching on the production of L2 English aspirated stops among Greek EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners. Two groups of speakers were recorded, an experimental group who received the pronunciation teaching intervention and a control group who did not receive special pronunciation instruction. The data were analysed acoustically and a native-likeness criterion (Birdsong 2007, Flege et al. 1992) was used to investigate individual variability. Overall, this study reports a positive effect of pronunciation instruction on the production of aspirated stops, however the great individual variability suggests that systematic target-like production of stops constitutes a challenging goal. A tentative effect of learners' gender is also obtained, as the female speakers produce greater VOT than the male ones after teaching.