Musical aptitude and second-language phonetics learning: Implications for teaching methodology

In this thesis I have explored the relationship between musical perception and speech perception as well as that between music production and speech production. I conducted four tests: music perception, speech perception, music production and speech production. The participants were 92 students at Simon Fraser University studying French at beginner and intermediate levels. First they completed a same/different music perception test for tone and rhythm, 40 pairs for tones and 40 pairs for rhythm. Subsequently, the students undertook a speech perception test in which they had to perform a two alternatives forced choice paradigm task for three pairs of vowel contrasts ([y/u, a/o, e/epsilon]). The third and fourth tests examined both the musical production ability and the speech production ability by means of a musical production test and vowel production test. For the music production test, the students were directed to listen to the first of five pre-selected tones and to reproduce orally what they had heard; the reproduction was recorded. This was repeated for the other four tones. The five pre-selected tones used for male participants were different from those used for female participants. For the vowel production test the students listened to a pre-recorded list of thirty monosyllabic words containing the vowel contrasts studied in the speech perception test; subsequently, each student was recorded while reading this list of words. The advanced groups were also asked to produce an extemporaneous extract, of about thirty seconds duration, describing their morning activities.;The results provided evidence of a correlation between music perception (rhythm) and speech perception, between music perception (rhythm) and accent production, between music production and speech perception, and between music production and accent production. Thus it was concluded that both hypotheses received support.;The purpose of this study was to learn more about individual differences in the acquisition of the pronunciation of a second language; this could possibly lead to a proposal for a better way to teach a second language. A correlation between music and speech suggests that students with musical aptitude could benefit from an approach that would emphasize listening to speech and music. The students without musical aptitude could be directed towards a more phonetic and more corrective approach.;Two hypotheses were tested in this study. The first assumed that there is a positive correlation between music perception and the perception of the sounds of a second language. The second hypothesis supposed that there is a positive correlation between music production and the pronunciation of sounds of a second language.