Presentation

Audiovisual and Auditory-Only Perceptual Training: Effects on the Pronunciation of French Nasal Vowels

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Abstract

Previous studies have shown that gains made during perceptual training can be transferred to gains in production and that audiovisual (AV) perceptual training often leads to greater improvement in production than auditory-only (A-only) training (Hardison, 2003; Hazan, Sennema, Iba, & Faulkner, 2005). This study investigated whether perceptual training on the three French nasal vowels led to improvement in the production of these vowels, and whether improvement was greater with AV perceptual training as opposed to A-only training. The productions of 60 American-English intermediate learners of French were recorded at pretest and posttest. The stimuli consisted of 108 CVC words in various consonantal contexts and the L2 learners’ productions were judged by two native French listeners in two rating tasks: a forced- choice identification rating task and a quality rating task. Results showed that both training groups—but not the control group— significantly improved from the pretest to the posttest, but that the production of the AV training group improved significantly more than the production of the A-only training group. Furthermore, the two types of analysis used to assess the production of the L2 learners revealed differences that have implications for research methodology and assessment.

How to Cite:

Inceoglu, S., (2014) “Audiovisual and Auditory-Only Perceptual Training: Effects on the Pronunciation of French Nasal Vowels”, Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Proceedings 6(1).