ULTIMATE ATTAINMENT IN L2 PHONOLOGY: The Critical Factors of Age, Motivation, and Instruction

Abstract

Within both first and second language acquisition research, a critical or sensitive period for complete attainment has largely been substantiated in phonological studies, although it is questionable whether age should be examined in isolation from sociopsychological influences and the extent of exposure to the second language. This study sets out to challenge the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) by examining phonological performance among highly motivated subjects who use German daily as graduate student instructors and who have been immersed in the language through in-country residence, augmented by years of instruction in both language- and content-based courses. The methodology developed seeks to expand the realm of factors that are potentially conflated with age, such as instruction, motivation, suprasegmental training, and self-perception of productive accuracy, and other factors that have not been addressed in previous studies on ultimate attainment. Production tasks target sounds difficult for nonnative speakers (NNSs) according to contrastive analysis, and task types range in complexity from isolated words to sentences, paragraphs, and free speech. A mean rating was computed for each speaker, including native speaker controls, according to native speaker judgments. When averaged across all tasks, nonnative speaker performance did not overlap with native performance. However, several variables correlated significantly with outcome, including suprasegmental training, which indicated performance closer to native level.