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Linguistic Approaches to Portuguese as an Additional Language
Edited by Karina Veronica Molsing, Cristina Becker Lopes Perna and Ana Maria Tramunt Ibaños
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 24] 2020
► pp. 61–82

Learning to perceive, produce and recognise words in a non-native language

Australian English vs. European Spanish learners of Brazilian Portuguese

| California State University
| University of Potsdam
| Western Sydney University

This chapter investigates three important skills that facilitate L2 communication: (1) perception (listening), (2) spoken word recognition (understanding) and (3) production (speaking) and their interrelation. In Part One, we present a review of the literature pertaining to L2 acquisition in Portuguese, with a particular focus on phonological acquisition. In Part Two, we review a series of recent studies that investigated the acquisition of Brazilian Portuguese vowels by naïve Australian English (AusE) and European Spanish (ES) listeners at the initial stage of learning. Each study targets one of the aforementioned skills and we will discuss the interrelation between them at the initial stage of L2 acquisition. We conclude the chapter by discussing the implications of this research for second-language learners and teachers of Portuguese.

Keywords: non-native speech perception, speech production, spoken word recognition, Brazilian Portuguese, Australian English, European Spanish
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • 1.Part one
    • 1.1Portuguese as a second or additional language
    • 1.2The acquisition of L2 Brazilian Portuguese speech perception and production
  • 2.Part two
    • 2.1Perceiving, understanding and producing Brazilian Portuguese
    • 2.2The Second Language Linguistic Perception model: A comprehensive theoretical and computational framework of L2 development
    • 2.3Non-native perception of Brazilian Portuguese vowels
      • 2.3.1Overview of Elvin (2016)’s non-native perception study
      • 2.3.2Methodology
        • 2.3.2.1Participants
        • 2.3.2.2Stimuli and procedure
      • 2.3.3Main findings
    • 2.4Spoken word recognition
      • 2.4.1Overview of the non-native spoken word recognition study in Elvin (2016)
      • 2.4.2Methodology
      • 2.4.3Main findings
    • 2.5Non-native production of Brazilian Portuguese vowels
      • 2.5.1Overview of Elvin, Escudero, Williams & Best (2016a) and Elvin, Williams & Escudero (2016b)
      • 2.5.2Methodology
      • 2.5.3Main findings
        • 2.5.3.1Acoustic similarity between native, non-native and target vowels
        • 2.5.3.2The relationship between non-native speech perception and non-native production
  • 3.Discussion and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 26 March 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.24.03elv
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