An Acoustic Study on the Use of Fillers in Spanish as a Foreign Language Acquisition

Abstract

Filled pauses are a vital component of foreign language learners’ communicative competence. Both instructors and students should be cognizant of its importance and employ various communication techniques to reduce the foreign accent. The most common Spanish filler is /e/. This study aims to investigate the vocalic fillers used by SFL learners. Twenty-four speakers with different L1s (English, French, and Russian) and language proficiency (intermediate and advanced) participated in the experiment. As these languages use distinct vocalic elements to fill pauses, the linguistic transfer may occur. Participants engaged in two semi-spontaneous tasks for data elicitation. Their fillers were categorized as either /e/ or non−/e/. Additionally, F1 and F2 values for filler classified as /e/ were compared between the control and experimental groups. In terms of fillers, the results indicate a linguistic transfer from the learners’ L1 to Spanish. Also, no difference was found for the F1 and F2 of /e/ between SFL learners and native Spanish speakers. In addition, learners with advanced proficiency were more likely to yield the correct production than those with intermediate proficiency.