Petrova, Katya Yurieva; (2025) Mandarin speakers’ English lexical stress acquisition: a cross-sectional and longitudinal perspective. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Adult L2 speech learning is characterized by large individual variability in the rate and level of ultimate attainment. Growing evidence suggests that individual differences in learners’ abilities to process acoustic information may be linked to variability in acquisition success for a broad range of language outcomes. Additionally, many studies have highlighted the crucial role that suprasegmentals play in L2 learner success, but much is still unknown about L2 suprasegmental acquisition. To this end, the current dissertation focused on the cross sectional and longitudinal investigation of L2 lexical stress acquisition by inexperienced native Mandarin learners of English. In Experiment 1, I explored the link between individual differences in domain-general auditory processing abilities and learners’ lexical stress processing cross-sectionally. Participants were assessed on a battery of auditory processing measures and their lexical stress perception scores and cue weights were also collected. In Experiment 2 I designed and assessed the effectiveness of a novel prosodic training paradigm by adapting the high variability phonetic training (HVPT) approach to the teaching of L2 lexical stress. Mandarin learners engaged in 6 sessions of training and were retested on their lexical stress processing post-training. In Experiment 2 I also asked if individual differences in participants’ auditory processing at Time 1 would explain variability in how much they benefited from the prosodic training at Time 2. Individual differences in auditory processing abilities were linked to lexical stress perception accuracy at Time 1 and were associated with learners’ cue weighting strategies. However, auditory processing abilities were not predictive of learning gains from the HVPT training, which was found to be effective for all learners and resulted in significant improvements in lexical stress perception. These findings have important theoretical implications for understanding the factors affecting L2 speech learning success and informing the development of real-world suprasegmental teaching approaches.

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