Task Type Effects on the Production of Voice Onset Time (VOT) by Japanese Learners of English

This research investigated effects of task types on the acquisition of English voice onset time (VOT) by Japanese university students with a short-term but intensive exposure to academic English. The data were collected from 11 Japanese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) receiving English-medium instruction at a university level, 11 Japanese EFL learners enrolled in regular EFL courses at the same university, and 11 native English speakers in two different conditions: a sentence-reading task and a picture description task. Results show that the Japanese speakers who had received English medium-instruction for a few months produced voiceless stops with more English-like VOT values only in the sentencereading task, but not in the picture description task. This may imply that although the short-term intensive exposure affects their VOT shift toward more English-like values, the task type differences may also play an important role in interpreting second language VOT acquisition.