Study Abroad and Changes in Degree of Foreign Accent in Children and Adults

The present study examines the impact of learning context and age on learners' degree of foreign accent. Participants of two different age groups (children vs. adults) learning English in two different contexts (at home vs. study abroad) were interviewed and asked to narrate a story and to fill...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Modern language journal (Boulder, Colo.) Colo.), 2014-03, Vol.98 (1), p.432-449
Main Authors: Munoz, Carmen, Llanes, Angels
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult education
Adults
age
Children
Dialects
English
English as a second language
English language learners
foreign accent
Foreign language instruction
L2 pronunciation
learning contexts
Native Speakers
Nonnative languages
Perceptual learning
Phonology
Second language acquisition
Second language learning
Study abroad
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The present study examines the impact of learning context and age on learners' degree of foreign accent. Participants of two different age groups (children vs. adults) learning English in two different contexts (at home vs. study abroad) were interviewed and asked to narrate a story and to fill out a questionnaire about their language use while abroad. A group of listeners rated the degree of perceived foreign accent of the oral productions of each of the groups. It was found that learning context played a significant role, with participants in the study abroad setting having a significantly milder foreign accent in the posttest. Although age did not influence the results statistically, child participants abroad experienced the greatest improvement and also spent more time speaking with native speakers than adult participants abroad. These results shed light on the characteristics of the study abroad experience that are beneficial for learners and on learner characteristics that optimize such an experience.
ISSN:0026-7902
1540-4781
DOI:10.1111/j.1540-4781.2014.12059.x