Good ear for sound details accelerates foreign language pronunciation
· News-MedicalPeople who are better at noticing fine details in sound – known as auditory precision – can master the pronunciation of new languages faster and more accurately than other learners, a new study finds.
Even when hearing a human voice, some people's brains do not immediately treat new sounds as 'language', instead they understand them as unfamiliar acoustic signals. This ability may be one of the keys to successfully mastering pronunciation of a new language.
In a second task, the participants distinguished similar subtle differences in non-speech sounds.
Foreign language education should move beyond an approach based on 'more practice' and towards one that develops learners' ear for language learning in line with their auditory characteristics." Dr. Kazuya Saito-van Poeteren, Lead Author, UCL Institute of EducationMost people approach foreign language learning by memorizing vocabulary and listening to speech, but our study indicated that language learners might also benefit from training the auditory abilities that underpin language learning itself.
The research team aim to develop a new form of combined language and auditory training designed to improve the ability to detect fine differences in pitch and other acoustic properties.
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