Investigating the impact of implicit and explicit instruction on phonological acquisition in a second language.

Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research has long debated how instruction affects SLA. Most researchers now agree that instruction can affect SLA, but that a distinction must be made between explicit instruction, which uses (formal) rules and explanations, and implicit instruction, where no such rules are provided. Most L2 instruction studies have investigated this contrast for grammar and vocabulary, but not for phonology (speech sounds). Research has also yet to investigate whether the effect of instruction type depends on the varying learning difficulty of L2 speech sounds (e.g. due to differences between the sound systems of the L2 and the learner's Ll, as predicted by Best & Tyler's (2007) Perceptual Assimilation Model for second language acquisition (PAM-L2)). Finally, few studies have focused on instructional effects on both phonological perception or production, or in other languagesthan English as Ll or L2.This project addresses these issues via two complementary approaches. First, a statistical meta-analysis combines the findings of previously published phonological instruction studies to compare the impact of implicit and explicit instruction and the impact of learning difficulty. Next, the project explores the impact of phonological instruction through a series of experiments. A first experiment investigates which difficulties Portuguese speakers experience when perceiving the contrasts between the Dutch vowels in • and between the vowels in -. The second and third experiments then explore the impact of implicit and explicit instruction on Portuguese-speaking learners of Dutch's ability to perceive and produce the two contrasts.