Perception of English Phonetic Contrasts by Dutch Children: How Bilingual Are Early-English Learners?

Overview

Journal PLoS One

Specialties General Medicine
Science

Date 2020 Mar 12

PMID 32160213

Citations 2

Authors

Claire Goriot

James M McQueen

Sharon Unsworth

Roeland van Hout

Mirjam Broersma

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

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.

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