Development of L2 Spanish VOT before and after a brief pronunciation training session
Katharina S. Schuhmann | The Pennsylvania State University
Marie K. Huffman | Stony Brook University
We present a study of the development of L2 stop VOT (voice onset time) in lower-level English-speaking learners
of Spanish over the course of a college semester. Participants were recorded six times in two-week intervals. Halfway through the
semester, students received a brief pronunciation training session with practice and feedback. Overall, the learners did not lower
their L2 VOTs in the first half of the study, before pronunciation training. Following training, however, they lowered their mean
VOTs for Spanish voiceless stops significantly. A similar effect was not found for their mean VOTs of Spanish voiced stops, in
line with prior work suggesting that prevoicing may be harder to acquire. Yet careful examination suggests that learners are
increasing the frequency with which they use prevoicing in Spanish, suggesting this metric might inform future work on L2 Spanish
pronunciation development. This work has implications for teaching and research in second language pronunciation.
Keywords: VOT development, pronunciation training, L2 Spanish, lower-level L2 coursework, novice learners, individual differences, foreign language learning
Published online: 03 December 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/jslp.18018.sch
https://doi.org/10.1075/jslp.18018.sch
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