This study explores the impact of multimodal high variability phonetic training on five L2 Dutch vowel and consonant contrasts for L1 French learners of Dutch in Belgium. Training effects are calculated by comparing pre-, post- and delayed post-test scores on lexical decision tasks for an experimental and a control group.
There is growing evidence in the literature for the positive effect of phonetic training on the perception of non-native phonemes. Gains have been most evident in the case of high variability phonetic training (HVPT), which has been shown to enhance lexical encoding (Mora-Plaza et al., 2019). By far the majority of training studies have targeted L2 English, with many focusing on the /r/-/l/ contrast (e.g. Wang & Munro, 2004; Hazan et al., 2005). In this experimental study, we take Sakai and Moorman's (2018: 215) advice to increase the range of languages and target phonemes to heart by training L1 French learners of Dutch on five different vowel and consonant contrasts which are known to be difficult for this group of learners (Hiligsmann & Rasier, 2007). The participants in this study are 30 adult L1 French learners of Dutch in the French-speaking part of Belgium, where Dutch is taught as a foreign language. Participants are assigned to an experimental (N=15) or a control group (N=15), representing proficiency levels ranging from pre- to low intermediate. Both groups take a pre-test, post-test and delayed post-test, which consists of a lexical identification task with and without noise. Only the experimental group is trained on the target contrasts in five multimodal HVPT sessions, consisting of perceptual identification tasks with feedback and metalinguistic information. The analyses calculate effect sizes of training for the experimental group compared to the control group for each of the five contrasts separately. The results suggest that a thorough understanding of the differential impact of HVPT on vowel and consonant perception requires the systematic study of a broad range of phonemic contrasts in languages other than English. The findings will also be discussed in light of current classroom practices.
