Saito, Kazuya (2019) The role of aptitude in second language segmental learning: the case of Japanese learners’ English /r/ pronunciation attainment in classroom settings. [Editorial/Introduction]
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Abstract
Building on the extensive work conceptualizing, developing, and validating foreign language aptitude for successful second language acquisition (e.g., Skehan, 2015 in Applied Linguistics), the current project expounded the cognitive abilities relevant and instrumental to adult Japanese classroom learners’ pronunciation attainment of English /ɹ/. The speech production of 50 Japanese participants was elicited, acoustically analyzed, and linked to different aspects of their aptitude profiles (phonemic coding, associative memory, sequence recognition). Whereas those with higher phonemic coding demonstrated better performance in a relatively easy dimension of English /ɹ/ pronunciation (tongue retraction), those with greater associative memory demonstrated more advanced performance in the relatively difficult dimensions of English /ɹ/ pronunciation (longer transition duration, labial/alveolar/pharyngeal constrictions). The role of incidental learning aptitude—sequence recognition—remained unclear. The findings here indicate that explicit aptitude related to phonological analysis and memory may play a key role in predicting the incidence of advanced L2 segmental proficiency attainment in classroom settings.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Editorial/Introduction |
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| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication |
| Depositing User: | Kazuya Saito |
| Date Deposited: | 24 Jul 2018 09:48 |
| Last Modified: | 09 Aug 2023 12:44 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/23195 |
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