The effects of noise on learners of English as a second language
Catherine L. Rogers · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2015
In the 65 years since the publication of The Effects of Noise on Man, as the world has grown ever noisier, it has also grown more diverse and more connected than ever before. Today, nearly a fifth of U.S. residents speak a language other than English at home. Consequently, exploring the effects of noise on people communicating in a second language is a crucial component of understanding the effects of noise on mankind in our increasingly pluralistic society. This presentation will overview some of the challenges faced by second-language learners as speakers and listeners, particularly focusing on the extraction of phonetic information from a noisy or impoverished signal. Results of ongoing research investigating vowel identification by native and non-native English-speaking listeners will be presented. Overall accuracy, the slope of the function relating signal-to-noise ratio and intelligibility, and effects of noise on listeners’ ability to benefit from phonetic enhancement strategies will be compared across native English speakers and second-language learners with differing ages of immersion in an English-speaking environment.