Training Korean second language speakers on English vowels and prosody

Abstract

This study trained thirty-six Korean L2 speakers on vowel identification and prosody recognition (focus and lexical stress), with the aim of investigating the extent to which training improves general speech perception abilities or specific underlying processes. Vowel training was accomplished with a high-variability identification training technique (multiple talkers and words), and prosody training was accomplished using a category discrimination task in which they needed to choose sentences based on focus or words based on syllable stress. The results demonstrated that both trainers improved syllable stress perception, vowel training improved vowel identification more, and prosody training better improved focus perception in sentences. Both types of training can thus work in a complementary fashion to improve overall speech recognition.