Does interest in language learning affect the non-native phoneme production in elderly learners?
نویسندگان
چکیده
Second language (L2) learning is widely studied in adult learners. This study was conducted in order to see how auditory training affects elderly learners’ L2 speech production and whether linguistically oriented seniors can benefit more from training compared to seniors not showing special interest in foreign languages. Hence, we studied seniors recruited from language courses and seniors with other than L2 related interests. The two day study included listenand-repeat trainings and production tests. The trained words included vowels from which the three first formants and their standard deviations were measured and analysed. The results showed that formant values changed differently as a function of training in the two groups. Also, the standard deviations developed differently: only the linguistically oriented seniors showed a deviation decrease, indicating non-native learning. This study showed that learning to produce a non-native phoneme can be easier for elderly learners who show a general interest in languages.
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