ROLE OF PERCEPTION IN ACQUISITION OF A FOREIGN OR SECOND LANGUAGE

Abstract

The Speech Learning Model (SLM) (Flege, 1995) predicts a correspondence between perception and production of L2 sounds (Flege, 1993). Only accurate perception leads to accurate production. The current study aims to test this prediction of the SLM. A perception and production test was conducted with a group of 11 adult learners of English. The perception test comprised of phonetic and lexical phonological identification task. The production test was based on a word reading task. In the phonetic perception task, stimuli were nonwords of VCV format with English voiced stops in C position and the tense front vowel on both sides of the consonant. In the second (phonological perception) task, English words starting with voiced stops recorded in the voice of a native speaker of English were played and the participants were asked to identify those words. In the third task, the participants were asked to produce a set of English words. The productions of the participants were recorded. Voice onset time (VOT) for the voiced stops of English was measured using Praat (Boersma & Weenink, 2012). An acoustic analysis of the productions show that the participants had produced all voiced stops of English with pre-voicing. On the other hand, they perceived all labial [b] and coronal voiced stops [d] of English in the stimuli as voiceless [p] and [t], respectively. They perceived most dorsal voiced stops [g] of the stimuli as voiceless [k]. In most Pakistani languages, voiced stops are produced as pre-voiced. As a result of equivalence classification between L1 and L2 sounds, a process of negative transfer occurs in the English L2 phonemic inventory of Pakistani learners. Thus, the learners develop a representation of voiced stops of English which is based on prevoicing. Therefore, the voiced stops produced with short-lag VOT by the native speaker of English were perceived by the participants as voiceless stops. This confirms that there is a strong correspondence between perception and production for these participants. The effect of vowel on adjacent stops, relationship between phonetic and phonological perception and lexical familiarity effect on perception of L2 learners was also established. The study concludes that if we have to improve our students in production of English consonants, we have to improve their perception of consonants of English Language.