Phoneme awareness and vocabulary acquisition in a German-language classroom
Abstract
This Master's thesis tests the role phoneme awareness plays in L2 vocabulary acquisition and pronunciation ability. 10 students enrolled in a German 201 or 202 course (third and fourth semester or beginner-intermediate) at Purdue University are tested under a phoneme awareness or no-phoneme awareness condition. Results show that phoneme awareness could play a role in students’ ability to learn new L2 vocabulary, but it does not influence students’ ability to pronounce the target phones. Results also indicate that students have more difficulty correctly pronouncing target phones in loan words from their L1 English. They rely on their L1 phoneme-grapheme mappings instead of the L2 phoneme-grapheme mappings to guide their pronunciation of these loan words. Instructors should take the aforementioned findings into consideration when teaching L2 vocabulary.
Degree
M.A.
Advisors
Sundquist, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Linguistics|Foreign Language|Language
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