PRODUCTION AND PERCEPTION OF THE /r/‐/l/ CONTRAST IN KOREAN ADULTS LEARNING ENGLISH

Training of Korean speakers in the perception and production of the /r/‐/l/ contrast in English resulted in short term improvement in production with little carryover. Improved identification of the phonemes in a speech perception task, however, did result. Speakers with lowest production scores produced an [r]‐like sound for /l/, while speakers with higher scores evidenced fewer confusions and they occurred both ways: r/l and l/r. Identification of items in a [ra] to [la] continuum was better than discrimination between pairs of items. There was a significant relationship between production and self‐perception, with live judgments of self in better agreement with experimenter judgments than were taped judgments of self. In some cases, production “errors” seem to parallel perceptual behavior and in other cases, they seem to be only a problem in production. Implications for training are drawn from the results.