LEARNING L3: WHY LEARNING FRENCH FIRST IS BETTER THAN LEARNING GERMAN FIRST

Laura Catharine Smith & Wendy Baker
Brigham Young University

ID 1661
[full paper]

This study investigated whether differences in cross-language similarity between English-French and English-German vowels would translate into differences in accurately identifying and discriminating French and German vowels (i.e., /i/, /y/, and /u/). In addition, this study investigated whether these same differences in cross-language perception would also translate into differences in accurately identifying and discriminating vowels in a novel third language. The results suggest that learners exposed to a language with a greater perceived difference with the L1 are more able to generalize their perception of their L2 vowels to a novel L3.