David Nguyen, originally from Vietnam, moved to Canada
in 1980, a time when many Vietnamese people were fleeing their country. David
was an engineer and, although it took a long time and a lot of hard work, his
credentials were eventually recognized, and he was hired in a large engineering
firm. His professional skills were very strong, but his employers often
complained that they had difficulty understanding him, despite the fact that he
had taken several ESL courses when he first arrived and had a good grasp of
both spoken and written English. The problem, as they put it, was his “heavy
accent.” Sixteen years after his arrival in Canada, David enrolled in a Clear
Speaking course offered two evenings a week for twelve weeks at a local
college. Along with his classmates, he received instruction intended to make
him more intelligible. On the first night, the students were invited to
participate in a study that would entail collecting samples of their English
pronunciation at the beginning and end of the course. Like David, the other
students had all been in Canada for extensive periods of time; the average
length of stay was ten years. They were all well educated and ranged from high
intermediate to very advanced in terms of English proficiency. Each student
agreed to record speech samples in the first and last weeks of the course; they
were offered an honorarium at the end of the study.
What the Research Says
What could David, after 16 years of living in an
English-speaking city in Canada, realistically expect from thirty-six hours of
instruction over twelve weeks? The conventional wisdom about immigrants like
David is quite discouraging. A widespread assumption is that he would have
fossilized, a term coined by Selinker (1972) to describe the process undergone
by a second language (L2) speaker who is unlikely to show improvement in
certain forms of the target language, regardless of instruction. Selinker’s
proposal is supported by a number of early pronunciation studies. Oyama (1976),
for instance, examined the pronunciation of 60 Italian immigrants to the United
States. Their ages on arrival ranged from six to twenty years, and they had
lived in the U.S. for five to eighteen years. Two linguistically trained judges
assessed their accentedness on a five-point scale. Oyama found that the
immigrants who arrived at later ages had much stronger foreign accents than
those who had come at an earlier age. Interestingly, length of time in the U.S.
made no significant difference to degree of accentedness. Oyama concluded that
pronunciation instruction in an L2 should take place when learners are young.
Her finding has often been interpreted as indicating that older learners don’t
benefit from pronunciation instruction; in other words, they have “fossilized.”
Another interpretation of fossilization is connected
to the length of time an L2 learner has spent in the target language community.
Research on naturalistic development of L2 pronunciation patterns has shown
that experience in the second language environment does indeed have some impact
on pronunciation, even though it is quite small. Moreover, most changes in the
direction of the target language tend to occur within the first year in the
second language environment (Flege, 1988; Munro & Derwing, 2008). These
findings, along with those of Oyama (1976), suggest that L2 learners’
productions will fossilize after even a relatively short period of residence in
their new language environment. Thus, fossilization has been tied to both age
and length of residence. Older learners are considered to have more diffi-
culty modifying their L2 speech, and learners who have resided in the target
language community for more than a year are considered to be likely candidates
for fossilization.
Read on…
PORTAL DA
LÍNGUA INGLESA has no responsibility for the
persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-partly internet websites
referred to in this post, and does not guarantee that any context on such
websites are, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
In some
instances, I have been unable to trace the owners of the pictures used here;
therefore, I would appreciate any information that would enable me to do so.
Thank you very much.
Is something important missing?
Report an error or suggest an improvement. Please, I strive for accuracy and
fairness. If you see something that does not look right, contact me!
Did you spot a typo?
Do you have any tips or examples
to improve this page?
Do you disagree with something on
this page?
Use one of your social-media
accounts to share this page:
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário