A GROUP OF 136 STUDENTS IN GERMAN ONE, TWO, AND THREE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY PARTICIPATED IN AN EXPERIMENT IN WHICH TESTS WERE MADE OF THEIR PRONUNCIATION OF INITIAL GERMAN "S" CLUSTERS (THOSE WHICH ARE SPELLED "S--" AND THOSE SPELLED "SCH--"). THIS PARTICULAR PRONUNCIATION PROBLEM WAS SELECTED BECAUSE THE GERMAN AND ENGLISH…

Handbooks of French phonetics disagree with the findings of phonetic research. Discussed are: differentiating between teaching pronunciation and auditory perception: the difference between acoustic and semantic hearing; and the importance of nasal regressive and progressive assimilation in contemporary spoken French. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

Paper based on research reported in a master's thesis submitted by Linda J. K. Klank at the University of Colorado. (DS)

A research project was undertaken to investigate the acquisition of the English sound system by kindergarten children of various first language backgrounds. Sixteen children were selected from three kindergartens in Prince Rupert, British Columbia according to the following criteria: (1) no English was spoken by parents; (2) the child scored 3 or…

A report on a study exploring the relationship between observed variability in second-language speech and the process in which correct variants are acquired and incorrect ones are replaced. Three phonological variables in the English speech of French-Canadian second-language speakers in Montreal were investigated. The method, results and…

Describes an investigation of the phonetic characteristics of children's second language acquisition, focusing on acoustical correlates of the voicing contrast for stop consonants, as produced by young native speakers of Arabic who were learning English as a second language. Neither age nor experience with English could predict phonetic…

Discusses problems and issues in naturalistic (non-school) acquisition of the phonology of a second language (L2). The data come from a longitudinal study of four German-speaking siblings learning English as a second language within an English-speaking community without classroom instruction. (KM)

This study is concerned with problems in language learners' intonation of English. Ten intonation problems were found in the learner speech of two adult Spanish-speaking males: (1) range of pitch, (2) initial rise, (3) final fall, (4) rise to final stressed syllable, (5) placement of prominence, (6) final rise for questions, (7) total question…

The goal of this study is to discover the phonetic difficulties encountered in the acquisition of French as a second language by English-speaking children. The children are studying French in a total immersion situation without benefit of structural exercises or special French language laboratory classes. Of particular interest here is the extent…

This is the first in a series of articles on general phonetic characteristics of American English. Language research techniques of spectrographic analysis, spectrographic synthesis, articulatory motion-picture study, and statistical calculation are briefly described. Thirty-five areas of phonetic difference for comparison of English to Spanish,…

Very sharp discrimination functions for the timing of voice onset relative to stop release characterize perceptual boundaries between certain pairs of stop consonants for adult speakers of many languages. To explore how these discriminations depend on experience, their development was studied among Kikuyu children, whose native language contains…

A knowledge of areas of difficulty as well as their underlying causes is necessary before instructional materials, teaching techniques, and evaluation methods in foreign language instruction can be organized. This research describes three methods of analyzing the problems in foreign language learning and suggests their complementary role in…

This study identified two types of interference between Hungarian and English: phonetic and phonological interference. Four native speakers of Hungarian who are second language speakers of English read a passage containing a wide variety of sounds in different phonological environments. A set of rules mapping American English onto…

This study conducted at the University of Kentucky in 1967-68 tests the theory of interaction between discrimination and pronunciation through a field test. After a brief review of previous research in phonemic discrimination as related to foreign language learning, the procedures and results of the test are presented. The text used was "Basic…