The relationship between phonotactic awareness and pronunciation in adult second language learners

• Autor(a) principal: Kivistö-de Souza, Hanna
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Revista Brasileira de Lingüística Aplicada (Online)
• Texto Completo: http://www.periodicos.letras.ufmg.br/index.php/rbla/article/view/10850
• topic: Pronúncia em LE; Consciência fonológica; aquisição de inglês como LE

This study examined to what extent L1 Brazilian Portuguese (BP) EFL learners are aware of L2 phonotactics and whether there would be a relationship between L2 phonotactic awareness and L2 pronunciation accuracy. The language learners were tested about their awareness of L2 onset consonant clusters with a lexical decision task presenting nonword stimuli with legal and illegal onset clusters. L2 pronunciation was measured with a Foreign Accent Rating Task. The results showed that L1 BP participants manifested high awareness about L2 phonotactics, not differing from L1 English speakers, t(86)=.20, p =.83. Furthermore, high phonotactic awareness was found to be related to higher accuracy in L2 pronunciation (r= -.46, p <.001). The results suggest that phonotactics should be taught in foreign language classrooms since increasing learners’ awareness might be beneficial for the accuracy of their L2 pronunciation.KEYWORDS: phonological awareness; phonotactic awareness; L2 pronunciation; consonant clusters