L2 consonant identification in noise: Cross-language comparisons
The difficulty of listening to speech in noise is exacerbated
when the speech is in the listener’s L2 rather than L1. In this
study, Spanish and Dutch users of English as an L2 identified
American English consonants in a constant intervocalic
context. Their performance was compared with that of L1
(British English) listeners, under quiet conditions and when
the speech was masked by speech from another talker or by
noise. Masking affected performance more for the Spanish
listeners than for the L1 listeners, but not for the Dutch
listeners, whose performance was worse than the L1 case to
about the same degree in all conditions. There were, however,large differences in the pattern of results across individual consonants, which were consistent with differences in how consonants are identified in the respective L1s.
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