The relationship between L2 learners’ production and perception of English vowels: The role of native-speaker acoustic patterns in production

Abstract

Despite the abundance of research on the relationship between second language (L2) learners’ production and perception of target-language contrasts, the nature and details of this connection remain unclear. The aim of this study was to extend our understanding of the relationship by investigating whether learners who can produce L2 vowels with the same acoustic properties as those used by native speakers of the target language also perceive the vowels more accurately. To this end, we examined the production and perception of two English vowel contrasts (tense /i/ vs. lax /ɪ/, mid /ε/ vs. low /æ/) in 29 native-speakers of American English and 33 L2 learners of English from three native-language backgrounds: Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish. We found that the L2 learners who produced distinctions between the target vowels using the same acoustic properties as do native speakers of English had significantly better perception scores for these vowels compared to the learners who distinguished the vowels using a pattern of acoustic properties that is not used by native speakers. This was also true when their patterns were compared to the learners who did not make any acoustic distinctions at all. The findings provide compelling evidence that L2 learners’ production patterns are linked to their perception skills.