Perceptual errors in English connected speech: the case of Japanese learners of English

Abstract There has been a recent increase in research on aural decoding and listening comprehension. It shows that English learners exhibit difficulty in aural decoding, especially in recognizing connected speech. This study examined English learners’ aural decoding in connected speech based on the framework of Wong et al. (2021. Chinese ESL learners’ perceptual errors of English connected speech: Insights into listening comprehension. System 98. 102480) with 81 intermediate-level Japanese L2 learners who listened to and transcribed 33 sentences. Errors were analyzed from two perspectives: phonetic and lexical/syntactic. Both phonetic and lexical/syntactic sets were further classified into five categories. The result showed that Japanese English learners struggle with connected speech features at the perceptual level of their bottom-up listening skills, which corroborates with Wong et al. (2021). The results also show errors distinct to Japanese English learners, such as boundary errors. Additionally, the study shows a clear procedure for analyzing perceptual errors.