Modification of L2 vowel production by perception training as evaluated by acoustic analysis and native speakers

Recent cross-language studies have shown that there is a link between speech perception and speech production when learning second language (L2) consonants. This paper reports additional evidence for such a link from a study which examines whether identification training of L2 vowels improves the trainees’ production ability. Twenty native speakers of Japanese served as subjects. Half of the subjects received a pretest, identification training on English /ɑ, æ, ʌ/ and a post-test. For the other half of the subjects, only the pretest and post-test were administered. In addition to the perception test, productions of the English vowels were recorded in the pre- and post-test. These productions were later examined in two ways; acoustical analysis and evaluation by native English speakers. Identification ability significantly improved from pretest to post-test for the trained group, but not for the untrained group as reported by Strange and Akahane-Yamada [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 102, 3137 (1997)]. More importantly, production ability showed a significant improvement from pretest to post-test for the trained group, suggesting that there is a link between vowel perception and vowel production. The results are discussed in the context of the theories of L2 learning.