Investigating the Effects of Speaker Variability on Arabic children’s Acquisition of English Vowels

Abstract

This study investigated whether speaker variability in phonetic training benefits vowel learnability by Arabic learners of English. Perception training using High-Variability stimuli in laboratory studies has been shown to improve both the perception and production of Second Language sounds in adults and children and has become the dominant methodology for investigating issues in Second Language acquisition. Less consideration is given to production training, in which Second Language learners focus on the role of the articulators in producing second language sounds. This study aimed to assess the role of speaker variability by comparing the effect of using High-Variability and Low-Variability stimuli for production training in a classroom setting. Forty-six Arabic children aged 9-12 years were trained on 18 Standard Southern British English vowels in five training sessions over two weeks and were tested before and after training on their vowel production and category discrimination. The results indicate that Low-Variability stimuli may be more beneficial for children, however, High-Variability stimuli may alter some phonetic cues. Furthermore, the results suggest that production training may be used to improve the perception and production of Second Language sounds, but also to inform the design of Second Language pronunciation learning programmes and theories of Second Language acquisition.