Phonological Awareness and Pronunciation in a Second Language
Abstract
The objective of this dissertation is to increase knowledge about L2 phonological awareness through three research agendas: to investigate the nature of L2 phonological awareness in adult language learners and its relation to some individual differences, to examine the relationship between L2 phonological awareness and L2 pronunciation, and to create novel language-specific instruments to measure L2 phonological awareness reliably. Research on phonological awareness has focused on L1 literacy acquisition, where it has been understood as the ability to manipulate speech segments. In SLA, phonological awareness has been examined in its explicit dimension. Nevertheless, due to the special nature of L2 speech acquisition, L2 learners are rarely able to elaborate explicitly on aspects of pronunciation. Consequently, the present study advocates that L2 phonological awareness mainly consists of proceduralized knowledge. L1 Brazilian Portuguese learners of English (n=71) were tested on their awareness about the L2 phonological system through three domain-specific (segmental, suprasegmental and phonotactic) tasks. Performance in the L2 phonological awareness tasks was related to the participants’ L2 pronunciation (measured with a Foreign Accent Rating Task) and to individual differences in the amount of L2 experience, L2 use and L2 proficiency. Additionally, 19 L1 American English speakers performed the same phonological awareness tasks, enabling comparison between L1 and L2 phonological awareness. The results revealed that L2 learners manifested significantly lower degrees of phonological awareness than L1 speakers. Moreover, L2 phonological awareness explained 32.8% of the variance in L2 pronunciation. As for the individual differences, L2 proficiency explained unique variance in L2 phonological awareness, whereas the role of L2 experience and use remained unsettled. Apart from contributing to our understanding of the nature of L2 phonological awareness, the findings of the present study have important pedagogical implications. Knowing the gaps in a language learner’s L2 phonological awareness enables the instructor to bring them to the learner’s attention, which in turn could be positively reflected in improved L2 pronunciation. Finally, the instruments developed for the present study are expected to guide further studies on L2 phonological awareness.
Keywords: phonological awareness, L2 speech learning, second language acquisition