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Analyzing Difficulties in Aural Word Recognition for Japanese English

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Analyzing Difficulties in Aural Word Recognition for Japanese English 『中国地区英語教育学会研究紀要』 No. 48（2018） 7 Analyzing Difficulties in Aural Word Recognition for Japanese English Learners: Identifying Function Words in Connected Speech University of Shimane Junior College Kriss LANGE This paper reports on a study that examined Japanese listeners’ difficulties in recognizing English function words in connected speech. Japanese first and second year university EFL students listened to short sentences of four to six words containing function words in connected speech and again in un-connected speech (citation form). Students transcribed the sentences and their errors were analyzed. Finding included, 1) students had considerably more difficulty transcribing connected speech than unconnected speech. 2) Function word pronouns beginning with the phoneme /h/ appear to be more difficult to perceive in connected speech. 3) Inadequate knowledge of how function words are modified in connected speech, little attention to sentence syntax, as well as a lack of phonological word knowledge are suggested as possible causes of difficulties in aural word recognition. 1. Introduction Aural word recognition can be defined as the process of making connections between the mental lexicon and speech input (Luce & Pisoni, 1998). The mental lexicon refers to the total knowledge of words and their corresponding syntactic, semantic, morphological, orthographic and phonological aspects that a language user can access (Jiang, 2000; Levelt, 1989). Accurate phonological knowledge is important to L2 listening ability because it allows the listener to quickly match speech input with words in the mental lexicon, thereby accessing the linguistic knowledge associated with those words. If the L2 listener has inaccurate or distorted phonological representations of words in their mental lexicon, their ability to quickly match speech input to known words will be impaired. According to Hirai (1999), there are three main problems that less proficient learners face in comprehending auditory input. First, they have insufficient syntactic and lexical knowledge to access while listening. Second, lack of familiarity with spoken language results in less automaticity for decoding words and phrases. Third, incorrect phonological knowledge of vocabulary impairs aural recognition even when the learner may be able to recognize the words visually. Therefore, the L2 listener －63－ may have to overcome inaccurate phonological knowledge as well as insufficient word and syntactic knowledge when attempting to decode speech input. Luckily, the listener does not need to rely exclusively on bottom-up processes such as phonological perception when attempting to recognize words in aural input. With sufficient background knowledge and familiarity with the language, aural input can be predicted and deduced through top-down processes. L2 listeners who may not have adequate familiarity with the language or background knowledge, must rely more on the accuracy of their bottom-up processes for comprehension, however. Although learners can rely on top-down processes and contextual knowledge to aid in aural word recognition, it is important to note that both top-down and bottom-up processes are essential to listening comprehension. The interdependent nature of top- down and bottom-up processes in listening comprehension is well-established (Buck, 2001; Rost, 2011). Listeners who overly rely on top-down processes to compensate for inadequate bottom-up skills could develop the tendency of guessing at the meaning or just being satisfied with knowing the gist of the message. Better bottom-up listening skills may lead to more accurate listening. One factor that tends to make decoding connected speech especially difficult for L2 listeners is that words and phonemes are normally blended (Al-jasser, 2008). Blended speech, also known as phonological modification, refers to context-dependent variations in pronunciation that occur in connected speech (e.g. gonna vs. going to). These variations in pronunciation occur due to the efficiency principle, whereby speakers tend to use the least amount of energy for communication, as well as co- articulation which naturally happens when speakers move their articulators (teeth, lips, tongue, jaw) from one position to another. This results in pronunciation that may be significantly different in connected speech than it is in isolated, citation form. Function words refer to words which signify grammatical relationships such as articles (a, the), auxiliary verbs (have, can, will), personal pronouns (he, you, we), possessive adjectives (her, my, their), demonstrative adjectives (this, that, those), prepositions (on, in, under) and conjunctions (than, and, or) (Celce-Murcia, 2016). Content words such as nouns and adjectives are given more attention so they are generally stressed in connected speech. Function words are also stressed in citation form, but usually take a weak form in connected speech, making them much more difficult to decode. According to Field (2008a), “weak forms may differ from the full forms in four ways: weak vowel quality, loss of phonemes, lack of stress and short duration” (p.146). L2 listeners may be unable to perceive known words in connected speech because of these phonological modifications (Goh, 2000; Henrichsen, 1984). Function words happen to be very frequent in everyday speech. According to Field (2008a) about 80 of the 100 most frequently spoken words in the British National Corpus are function words. However, L2 listeners may fail to perceive them due to their weak form in connected speech. We could argue that perceiving function words is not that important for comprehension as long as the content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, －64－ etc.) are recognized. This may be true in some cases, but even little function words can drastically alter the meaning as in these two phrases: “I’m looking for the pictures” and “I’m looking at the pictures” (Adapted from Field, 2008b). Function words may seem insignificant but they fulfil the necessary task of conveying important syntactic information. It is reasonable to expect that improving recognition for function words may help L2 listeners improve their listening skills. According to Field (2008a), “Function word recognition is another area where intensive practice will pay dividends” (p.146). Function words occur very frequently and contain important grammatical information but they are difficult to perceive due to their weak forms in connected speech. Field (2008b) demonstrated that function words were not identified as well as content words by 46 L2 listeners of various L1s. The participants took paused transcription tests which assess the ability to decode authentic, connected speech. In paused transcription tests the aural text has pauses inserted at irregular intervals and is only played once. When listeners come to a pause, they try to recall and transcribe the phrase they just heard (usually 4-5 words) from memory. This method is thought to be a valid means of measuring decoding ability because listeners are able to utilize the context through top-down processes as well as rely on their bottom-up perceptual skills to complete the transcriptions (Field, 2011). Results from this study indicated that, “In most cases, mean percentage recognition for functors was approximately 20% lower than for content words” (p. 424). Field (2008b) also noted that difficulty in recognizing function words seemed to be independent of the listeners L1 or level of proficiency. In another study utilizing paused transcription tests to investigate content and function word decoding ability, Sheppard and Butler (2017) also showed that L2 listeners perceived and transcribed significantly fewer function words than content words. The 77 participants, consisting mostly of Chinese L1 students at a university- based intensive English program, were able to transcribe 76% of the content words and 54% of the function words in the paused transcriptions. These finding align with Field’s (2008b) study which showed that recognition for function word was about 20% lower than it was for content words. A study with Japanese L1 students has also indicated that weak forms of function words in connected speech can be difficult for learners to perceive. Hirose (2007), investigated the ability of 25 junior college students to perceive function words in either weak or strong form in connected speech. The study used a partial dictation test in which participants listened to 11 sentences ranging from four to ten words and provided one to three missing function words per sentence. Five of the sentences were missing strong-form function words and six sentences were missing weak-form function words. Results showed that when function words appear in their strong forms in connected speech, such as at the end of a sentence, they are much easier to perceive. However, weak forms of the function words, it, from, has, of, her, a, himself were quite difficult to perceive. For example, in the case of has, her and himself, none of the 25 participants －65－ correctly transcribed the missing word in the partial dictation test. This study suggests that function word perception in connected speech is an important factor in listening ability and worthy of further investigation. Although the results of previous studies indicate that function words are more difficult to perceive, the reason for the difficulty is assumed to be the reduced nature of function words in their weak forms. A study is needed to confirm this assumption by comparing
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