Discrimination of English Vowels by Bilingual Spanish/English Adults and Children

Lehman College of the City University of New York, Bronx, New York
Email address: sandra.levey@lehman.cuny.edu

Abstract:

The discrimination of English vowel contrasts in real and novel words by 101 bilingual Spanish/English- and native English-speaking adults and children was examined. Bilingual-speaking adults and children had significant difficulty with certain English vowel contrasts, while native English participants had none. The vowels that affected discrimination accuracy were those absent from Spanish and those more similar to one another in the F1-F2 acoustic range.

The main non-linguistic factors that affected bilingual-speaking adult and children's discrimination accuracy were the age of acquisition of English and the overall percentage of time devoted to communication in English. While production tends to be the focus of most practitioners working with second language learners, these results suggest practitioners should consider discrimination and vowel quality when working with second language learners with speech or language disorders.

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