Department of Cognitive Science, Faculty of Media and Knowledge Sciences, University of Malta, Msida, Malta.
Institute of Phonetics and Speech Processing, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, Munich, Germany.
PLoS One. 2020 Feb 7;15(2):e0227643. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0227643. eCollection 2020.
Second language (L2) learners are often aware of the typical pronunciation errors that speakers of their native language make, yet often persist in making these errors themselves. We hypothesised that L2 learners may perceive their own accent as closer to the target language than the accent of other learners, due to frequent exposure to their own productions. This was tested by recording 24 female native speakers of German producing 60 sentences. The same participants later rated these recordings for accentedness. Importantly, the recordings had been altered to sound male so that participants were unaware of their own productions in the to-be-rated samples. We found evidence supporting our hypothesis: participants rated their own altered voice, which they did not recognize as their own, as being closer to a native speaker than that of other learners. This finding suggests that objective feedback may be crucial in fostering L2 acquisition and reduce fossilization of erroneous patterns.
第二语言（L2）学习者通常意识到母语使用者的典型发音错误，但自己却经常坚持犯这些错误。我们假设，由于经常接触自己的发音，L2 学习者可能会认为自己的口音比其他学习者的口音更接近目标语言。这一点通过记录 24 位以德语为母语的女性说出的 60 个句子得到了验证。同样的参与者后来对这些录音进行了口音评价。重要的是，这些录音被改变了声音，听起来像男性，因此参与者在要评价的样本中没有意识到自己的发音。我们发现了支持我们假设的证据：参与者评价自己的被改变的声音，他们没有认出那是自己的声音，认为这个声音比其他学习者更接近母语使用者。这一发现表明，客观的反馈对于促进第二语言习得和减少错误模式的僵化可能是至关重要的。
