Collabobrators
University of Agder
Department of Foreign Languages and Translation: Allison Wetterlin and Linda Wheeldon
Université Paris Cité, France
Department of English studies: Maud Pélissier
Summary
Multilingualism is considered an essential part of European identity, yet, for learners of a second language (L2), a foreign accent is one of the most difficult aspects to overcome and can lead to discrimination and lack of credibility. Learning a new phonological system involves creating new phonological categories, which becomes increasingly difficult with age, and especially when the first and second languages belong to different language families. Adult learners often have trouble distinguishing two sounds in the target language when that contrast does not exist in their first language (L1). For example, Norwegian learners find it difficult to perceive and produce the voicing contrast between [s] and [z] in English, as it is not used in their L1. There is still much we do not know about how learners of an L2 perceive and encode sounds in their target language. Yet, this topic is of fundamental importance to language teaching, as understanding what is problematic for L2 phonology will facilitate the design of better teaching methods and remediation solutions. Our project thus aims to investigate the nature of second language phonological representations in Norwegian learners of English.