Effects of attention on the production of Spanish consonants by SFL learners

The aim of this paper is to analyse the production of Spanish stops /b, d, g, p, t, k/ and liquids /l, ɾ/ by Mandarin Chinese learners of Spanish (N=10). Two different tasks were used to elicit data: one induced a focus on stops and the other a focus on liquids. Realizations were categorized based on spectral manifestation, and acoustic parameter values between the two groups were compared. The results showed that attention exerts a significant influence on voiced stops and tap production: more inaccurate productions were observed when the learners did not focus on these phonemes. The data also pointed to considerable intra-speaker variation. Learners tended to produce realizations with longer durations in new phonemes: /b, d, g, ɾ/.