The relationship between language attitudes and metaphonological awareness with the pronunciation of adolescent learners of Polish as an L3

Abstract

A number of factors such as age of onset of learning, motivation and type of instruction have been shown to influence the phonological development of foreign language learners[1] (cf. e. g., Nagle 2022). More recently, some studies have suggested that language attitudes and metaphonological awareness might also play a role in the development of foreign language pronunciation by classroom learners (cf. e. g., Sardegna/Lee/Kusey 2018; Saito 2019). However, no investigations have yet been carried out that directly relate these two factors to the learners’ pronunciation of specific sounds of the target language.

This study investigates the relationship between both the learners’ attitudes and metaphonological awareness with the development of their pronunciation skills during the first year of learning a new foreign language. We investigated 21 adolescents (aged 12–13) with L1 German and L2 English, who had just begun to learn Polish as their L3. Three types of data were collected at the very beginning and the end of the school year: a) questionnaire data on the learners’ attitudes towards learning Polish, learning languages and their pronunciation; b) a score of the learners’ metaphonological awareness measured with a Polish accent-mimicry task, and c) auditory analyses of their pronunciation of Polish /r/ and vowel reduction in a delayed repetition task. The results of mixed effects logistic regression modelling show that some of the learners’ attitudes predict their accuracy of pronouncing Polish /r/ and unreduced vowels. Moreover, the learners’ pronunciation of unreduced vowels, but not /r/ in Polish improved significantly over the school year and higher metaphonological awareness predicted higher accuracy of unreduced vowels in Polish. The results are discussed from both a theoretical and pedagogical perspective.

[1] We use the term “foreign language learners” to refer to individuals living in the L1 environment and studying a non-native language in the classroom setting, either as their first foreign language (L2) or second foreign language (L3). Research on individual learner differences in non-native phonological learning has commonly used the term “second language” (L2) as an umbrella term for all types of acquisitional contexts, including those which concern individuals studying an additional language in the target language environment (cf. Nagle 2022; Hammarberg 2010).

[1] We use the term “foreign language learners” to refer to individuals living in the L1 environment and studying a non-native language in the classroom setting, either as their first foreign language (L2) or second foreign language (L3). Research on individual learner differences in non-native phonological learning has commonly used the term “second language” (L2) as an umbrella term for all types of acquisitional contexts, including those which concern individuals studying an additional language in the target language environment (cf. Nagle 2022; Hammarberg 2010).