The effects of L2 experience on L3 perception

ABSTRACT

This study examines the influence of experience with a second language (L2) on the perception of phonological contrasts in a third language (L3). This study contributes to L3 phonology by examining the influence of L2 phonological perception abilities on the perception of an L3 at the beginner level. Participants were native speakers of Korean whose L2 was English and whose L3 was Japanese. They participated in two perception tasks involving Japanese contrasts and one perception task involving English contrasts. Correlations between Korean participants’ perception performance in their L2 and L3 were analysed to determine whether the level of L2 ability was related to the successful perception of phonological contrasts in the L3. The results of the correlation analysis demonstrate that, in general, the better the participants performed in their L2, the better they also performed in their L3, but this result was limited to a few contrasts. The overall findings suggest that L3 learners’ phonological perception is positively influenced not only by experience with specific L2 contrasts, but also by the general experience of learning a foreign language, which gives them a global advantage in phonological perception.

KEYWORDS:

• Third language acquisition
• third language phonology
• L2 status
• L2 perception
• L3 perception
• L2 influence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.