Context of Learning in the Acquisition of Spanish Second Language Phonology

Studies in SLA have debated the importance of context of learning in the process of developing linguistic skills in a second language (L2). The present paper examines whether study abroad, as it provides opportunities for authentic L2 context, facilitates the acquisition of Spanish phonology. The corpus of this investigation is composed of speech samples from 46 students of Spanish: 26 studying abroad in Spain and 20 in a regular classroom environment in the United States. The students read a paragraph with 60 target words including segments such as word-initial stops (i.e., p t k),Throughout the article a phonetic representation of all sounds following the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is presented. Phonetic (instead of phonological) representations avoid making assumptions about underlying L2 representations. intervocalic fricatives (i.e., ), word-final laterals (i.e., l), and palatal nasals (i.e., ). The findings reveal the following patterns for both regular classroom and study abroad students across time: (a) similar gain in the case of voiced initial stops and word-final laterals, (b) lack of gain in the case of intervocalic fricatives, and (c) high levels of accuracy in the case of the palatal nasal in the pretest. Concerning the external data, the following factor groups predicted phonological gain among all learners: years of formal language instruction, reported use of Spanish before the semester, reported use of Spanish outside the classroom during the semester (days), reported use of Spanish outside the classroom during the semester (hours), gender, entrance Oral Proficiency Interview, exit Oral Proficiency Interview, and level at which formal instruction began.