Dr Angelos Lengeris, Lecturer in Linguistics for the Department of English Language & Linguistics, will present at the Speech Science Forum at University College London (UCL) on Wednesday 21 February 2018.

His talk focuses on how ‘Auditory Training Improves Second-language Pronunciation in Spontaneous Speech’.

Computer-based auditory training has been found to improve the production of second-language vowels and consonants in isolated words, and words in scripted sentences. However, we do not know whether learning transfers to spontaneous speech. In his talk, Angelos will present the results of a study examining the effects of computer-based auditory training on Greek speakers’ production of English vowels in sentences and spontaneous speech.

Vowel production was assessed via an identification test with native English speakers and an acoustic analysis of vowel quality before and after training. Training significantly improved learners’ production of English vowels in sentence materials and in spontaneous speech, which demonstrates the ecological validity of the high-variability paradigm.

The talk will take place at UCL’s Speech Hearing and Phonetic Sciences department in London.