tailieunhanh - Recognizing foreign languages in pre lexical stage: The case of Vietnamese and Filipino listeners

The study presented in this article is one of the attempts to find out whether adult learners can consistently distinguish unknown languages spoken by the same talker and thus whether they are subconsciously aware of the acoustic – phonetic characteristics of these languages in the pre-lexical stage of learning. | JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, Hue University, Vol. 70, No 1 (2012) pp. 85-97 RECOGNIZING FOREIGN LANGUAGES IN PRE-LEXICAL STAGE: THE CASE OF VIETNAMESE AND FILIPINO LISTENERS Nguyen Van Huy College of Foreign Languages, Hue University Abstract. The study presented in this article is one of the attempts to find out whether adult learners can consistently distinguish unknown languages spoken by the same talker and thus whether they are subconsciously aware of the acoustic – phonetic characteristics of these languages in the pre-lexical stage of learning. It also seeks to find out if the learners’ L1 phonetic background may have any influence on the unknown language discrimination task. It is found out that the Filipino and Vietnamese listeners can generally perform above chance in the language discrimination task. Moreover, it is also revealed in the study that the Vietnamese students, whose L1 is a tonal language, performed better in the group with tone as a contrast feature. The findings serve as an evidence for the listeners’ ability to abstract language features from the talker voice characteristics in order to accomplish the language discrimination task. They also provide evidence to argue for the adaptation of the optimal silence period in the CLT to get the learner acquire the suprasegmental features of the target language in a more effective way. Finally, the study proves the influence of the learners’ L1 phonetic background on acquiring the acoustic – phonetic features of a foreign language. 1. Introduction It is obvious that human beings are endowed with the capability to make the distinction between different kinds of sound in the surrounding physical environment. We can tell the difference of melodies, animal cries, musical instruments, machines and other unintelligible sounds. We can of course tell which sound pattern is possible in our native language though no meaning is assigned to it (. sprot in English) and which is not (. grtot in English). This .

• Giáo dục học
• Recognizing foreign languages
• Foreign languages
• Pre lexical stage
• The language discrimination task
• The language discrimination