Orthography-induced transfer in the production of English-speaking learners of Spanish

Abstract

This article reports on a study on the effect of orthography on L1-based phonological transfer in L2 production in 40 novice English-speaking learners of Spanish. In particular, the role of auditory-orthographic training and production and the influence of grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences are examined. Data elicited via a picture-naming task reveal a robust effect of orthography on phonological transfer leading to non-target-like productions at the very beginning stages of second language acquisition. There is also strong evidence that condition of training and production as well as the type of grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence determine the quantity of transfer. The difference in the quantity of transfer between the individual grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences is explained in light of salience and frequency effects. Pedagogical implications of the findings are also discussed.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Language Learning Dissertation Grant awarded to the author by the Language Learning journal and is based on part of the author's doctoral dissertation. I would like to thank Laura Colantoni, Jeffrey Steele, Ana Teresa Pérez-Leroux, Martha Young-Scholten and Alister Cumming for their invaluable and constructive critiques. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers and the editors of this journal, Norbert Pachler and Elspeth Broady, for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this work.

Notes

1. PRAAT is a software for analysis of acoustic signal. See Boersma, P. and D. Weenink. 2012. Praat: doing phonetics by computer [Computer program]. Version 5.3.35, retrieved 8 December 2012 from http://www.praat.org/

2. Table 7 does not include <h> because <h> corresponds to an actual phoneme (e.g. /h/) in English but it is silent in Spanish.