Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour, Centre for Cognition, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
PLoS One. 2020 Mar 11;15(3):e0229902. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0229902. eCollection 2020.
The aim of this study was to investigate whether early-English education benefits the perception of English phonetic contrasts that are known to be perceptually confusable for Dutch native speakers, comparing Dutch pupils who were enrolled in an early-English programme at school from the age of four with pupils in a mainstream programme with English instruction from the age of 11, and English-Dutch early bilingual children. Children were 4-5-year-olds (start of primary school), 8-9-year-olds, or 11-12-year-olds (end of primary school). Children were tested on four contrasts that varied in difficulty: /b/-/s/ (easy), /k/-/ɡ/ (intermediate), /f/-/θ/ (difficult), /ɛ/-/æ/ (very difficult). Bilingual children outperformed the two other groups on all contrasts except /b/-/s/. Early-English pupils did not outperform mainstream pupils on any of the contrasts. This shows that early-English education as it is currently implemented is not beneficial for pupils' perception of non-native contrasts.
本研究旨在探究早期英语教育是否有益于感知英语语音对比，因为这些对比对于荷兰母语者来说是难以区分的，我们将比较在学校从 4 岁开始接受早期英语教育的荷兰学生、从 11 岁开始接受主流英语教学的学生，以及英语-荷兰双语儿童。被试为 4-5 岁（小学开始）、8-9 岁或 11-12 岁（小学结束）的儿童。儿童需要测试四个具有不同难度的对比：/b/-/s/（简单）、/k/-/ɡ/（中等）、/f/-/θ/（困难）、/ɛ/-/æ/（非常困难）。双语儿童在所有对比中均优于其他两组，除了/b/-/s/。接受早期英语教育的学生在任何对比中均未优于主流学生。这表明，目前实施的早期英语教育对学生感知非母语对比没有益处。
