UCLA

Imitation, the ability to copy another person’s gestures, acoustic features, or speech style, is a cognitive skill present throughout life and plays an important role in language learning and acquisition. Evidence from first language research shows that infants begin imitating speech patterns early in development. This capacity continues into adulthood, particularly during conversational interaction or when individuals are explicitly instructed to imitate a model. The present study investigates a method for teaching second language (L2) phonology to adult English-speaking learners of Spanish through explicit focused-attention imitation training. The method builds on a pilot study (Meléndez-Ballesteros, 2012) with students enrolled in a second-semester elementary Spanish course. Participants were divided into four groups and performed specific listening and speaking exercises. The current study focuses on the audio-visual exercise of that study. Students were randomly assigned to either a training or non-training group and completed the same audio-visual activities following two separate sets of instructions. The training group received explicit focused-attention imitation instructions, whereas the non-training group repeated the model’s speech without explicit imitation instructions. The phonetic training lasted sixteen weeks. The effectiveness of the training program and developmental trends in students’ pronunciation were evaluated through acoustic analysis of the segmental duration of the Spanish trill [r], one of the most difficult sounds for L2 learners to acquire. Its duration was measured as a function of time in word-initial and word-medial positions, including intervocalic contexts, where these phones exhibit a phonemic contrast. The patterns of change over time in students’ productions of the Spanish trill were measured acoustically at four different time points throughout the semester. A growth-curve model within an HLM framework was used to examine individual learning trajectories over time, revealing variability in learners’ development. Although statistically significant group-level differences between the training and the non-training groups were not consistently observed, the longitudinal analyses revealed variability in individual trajectories, with some learners exhibiting changes in production and differing rates of change from baseline. The present study aims to contribute to the body of research on the explicit teaching of L2 speech sounds, focusing on adult learners of a second language. Unlike most studies of this type, it examines underlying individual differences that may contribute to the effectiveness of the training program by measuring students’ performance at four different time points rather than relying solely on the conventional two (i.e., pre- and post-measurements).