Effects of targeted perceptual training on L2 suprasegmental weighting strategies

Learning a second language (L2) is a desirable skill, yet some learners struggle to achieve proficiency. These difficulties might arise partly from perceptual strategies inherited from learners’ first language (L1). For example, speakers of a tone language like Mandarin, in which pitch is an essential cue, tend to over-use pitch in English prosody perception and production. Here, we developed a novel training paradigm to help Mandarin learners of English adopt more native-like perceptual strategies by enhancing their ability to use duration relative to pitch cues during prosody categorization. 30 learners completed the targeted prosody training and the control group of 30 participants practiced English vocabulary. After prosody training, participants showed enhanced use of duration during categorization of phrase boundaries, where duration is the primary cue. For word focus and lexical stress, there was no clear change in perceptual strategies, suggesting that cue weighting training is most effective when it guides listeners towards using the primary cue for a given feature. Control group showed stronger reliance on pitch when categorizing lexical stress at post-test suggesting that in the absence of targeted instruction listeners tend to solidify the use of the strategy that works well for them. Our findings provide evidence of strong reliance on pitch among Mandarin learners and difficulties resisting default strategies in L2 speech perception. Nevertheless, we show that perceptual strategies that took a lifetime to develop can be adjusted with as little as three hours of training. These findings offer a new direction for designing targeted training paradigms.