Selectivity in the Effects of Orthography on L2 Phonetic Imitation Among Young Learners

ABSTRACT We aim to investigate whether young second language learners can imitate vocalic quality in the second language and to determine the extent to which orthographic input modulates imitative performance. We recruited 28 native Polish teenage learners of English to take part in an imitation experiment, where they were asked to repeat English words containing KIT and TRAP vowels, reported to be problematic for Polish learners, after a native English speaker. To determine the effect of orthographic input, only half of the participants could see the words on the screen while imitating them. Convergence was evaluated primarily in terms of shifts in participant–model Euclidean distances in Bark‐normalized vowel space across a word reading task and the imitation task, and across the imitation task and a post‐task. The analysis considered the effect of orthographic input in the imitation task on the degree of the shifts. The secondary measure of convergence accounted for within‐participant formant shifts across the tasks. Our results support the idea that phonetic imitation is a selective process. KIT, whose realization by Polish learners is generally guided by Polish pronunciation‐to‐spelling associations, was imitated. TRAP, which remains problematic for Poles potentially for other reasons, was not imitated. We showed that the presence of orthographic representations of the stimuli does not affect imitative performance, but it may provide marginal benefits in the formation of target‐like pronunciation‐to‐spelling associations. Our study considers the effect of orthographic input on the degree of imitation by young L2 learners, as well as on the persistence of the imitative effect. It also offers a more comprehensive approach to ascertaining convergence by considering within‐participant changes across the tasks. We showed that the effect of orthographic input on L2 speech does not surface in the process of phonetic imitation by young L2 learners.