Effects of Phonetic Training on the Perception and Production of /i:/-/I/ and /ӕ/-/ʌ/ by Catalan/Spanish Learners of English

[Abstract] Cross-language differences in vowel perception and production have shown clear limitations in the accuracy with L2 phonetic segments are perceived and produced by native speakers of Romance languages. The present study investigates Catalan/Spanish learners’ ability to learn to discriminate and produce the English tense-lax (/i:/-/I/) and front-central (/ӕ/- /ʌ/) vowel contrasts through a six-week phonetic training, given their difficulties to use and access to L2 spectral and durational information. A minimal-pair AX vowel discrimination task and F1-F2 and duration measures in vowels elicited through a delayed repetition task were used to assess learners’ gains in perceptual and productive ability, respectively, before (pre-test) and after (post-test) training. Accuracy in vowel discrimination was found to increase significantly, whereas in production only modest accuracy gains were obtained. These results suggest that, despite a more accurate perception of L2 vowels, learners still produced /i:/-/I/ and /ӕ/-/ʌ/ with no significant spectral differences at post-test but rather a durational contrast that is larger than in L1 English