Ahorra ahora para comprar un carro caro. Speech perception in teaching pronunciation: Learning Spanish liquid phonemes by Chinese, Korean, and Japanese students

• Published in: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America Vol. 128; no. 4_Supplement; p. 2446
• Main Author: Espinosa, Aída
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 01.10.2010
• ISSN: 0001-4966; 1520-8524
• DOI: 10.1121/1.3508750

Chinese, Korean, and Japanese students (Asian) have trouble pronouncing Spanish liquid phonemes. The main aims of this research were to prove that speech perception is a requisite to improve the production of these sounds, and that adult Asian students can accurately produce Spanish liquid phonemes if they are guided to change their patterns of perception. This text is based mainly on speech perception studies by Flege and colleagues, [(1995); (2007)] who have found that one of the difficulties experienced by students in the oral production during a second language acquisition is the result of speech perception habits acquired with their first language. The study was carried out with subjects who study at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). An experimental group was exposed to stimuli to raise their speech perception; other experimental group were given exercises of listen and repeat and given articulatory instructions; a control group was not given any kind of training. The results were assessed by Fisher Exact Probability Test, which allowed us to prove that there exists a strong relationship between learning liquid phonemes and training with speech perception exercises. It is concluded that adult Asian students can improve their pronunciation.