New Perspectives on the Teaching of Pronunciation: The Case of the Spanish Vowels

Abstract

This study focuses on the acquisition of the Spanish vowel system by English-speaking L2 learners. The vowel inventory of Spanish varies greatly from the English vowel system, yet the two are not normally differentiated in instructional strategies. We focus primarily on the mispronunciation of vowels, as they are critical to verb morphology in Spanish, as well as their mispronunciation can lead to confusion between minimal pairs in Spanish (e.g., reino ‘kingdom’ vs. reno ‘reindeer’). Using the Corpus Oral de Español como Lengua Extranjera (ELE), we explored the most frequent types of mistakes produced by these learners in their pronunciation of Spanish vowels. Analysis showed that these mispronunciations included, but was not limited to, vowel reduction or vowel alternation. Moreover, the study concludes with an interpretation of plausible sources of this problem as well as discussing the role of vowel mispronunciations in L2 learner’s intelligibility.