Collaborative Research: A longitudinal approach to examining perception-production links in second language speech sound learning.

学习另一门语言的主要挑战之一是学习如何发音。对于成年学习者来说，母语就像一个过滤器，可能会阻止他们正确地感知新语言的声音。如果他们不能正确地感知这些声音，他们可能就不能正确地发出这些声音。这些发音问题会影响学习者理解新语言的能力和他们用新语言交流的能力。例如，当他们听一门新语言时，他们可能很难区分相似的单词，而当他们说这门语言时，他们可能会说出听众不理解的单词。研究人员知道，准确地感知声音是准确地产生声音的先决条件，但对声音感知和声音产生如何相互发展和影响知之甚少。了解这些技能是如何发展和相互作用的，是开发更好的发音学习模式和更好的训练程序的必要的第一步，这些模式和程序可以帮助学生更快、更有效地学习新语言。在这个项目中，研究人员研究了在一门新语言中区分和发出声音的能力是如何随着时间的推移而发展的。这将通过对参与者进行声音感知、声音制作或两者兼而有之的培训来完成。这两项技能的表现将在整个培训过程中在多个点进行测量，以调查每个领域的表现如何随时间变化，以及它们之间的关系如何随时间演变。参与者将他们在培训中所学到的知识应用于新单词和新声音的能力也将被测试，作为调查不同类型的培训如何帮助第二语言学习者处理语言变化的一种手段。研究结果将为建立更全面的第二语言语音学习模式奠定基础。此外，研究结果将为如何优化发音教学提供见解，以帮助学习者准确地感知和产生其他语言的声音和单词，为有效的第二语言交流奠定基础。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

One of the main challenges of learning another language is learning how to pronounce the constituent sounds. For adult learners, the native language acts like a filter, which may prevent them from perceiving the sounds of the new language correctly. If they don’t perceive those sounds correctly, they may not produce them correctly. These pronunciation problems can affect learners’ ability to understand the new language and their ability to communicate in it. For example, when they listen to the new language, they may struggle to distinguish similar words and when they speak it, they may produce words that listeners don’t understand. Researchers know that perceiving sounds accurately is a prerequisite for producing them accurately, but little is known about how sound perception and sound production develop and influence one another. Understanding how these skills develop and interact is a necessary first step toward developing better models of pronunciation learning and better training procedures that can help students learn new languages more quickly and effectively. In this project, the investigators examine how the relationship between the ability to differentiate and produce sounds in a new language develops over time. This will be accomplished by training participants on sound perception, sound production, or both. Performance in both skills will be measured at multiple points throughout training to investigate how performance in each area changes over time and how the relationship between them evolves over time. Participants’ ability to apply the knowledge they learned during training to new words and to words spoken in a new voice will also be tested, as a means of investigating how different types of training help second language learners deal with variability in speech. The results will lay the foundation for developing a more comprehensive model of second language sound learning. Additionally, findings will provide insight into how pronunciation instruction can be optimized to help learners perceive and produce the sounds and words of other languages accurately, forming the basis for effective second language communication.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.