從臺灣大學生的英語子音串聽辨能力看學習英語的年齡效應

Age Effects of Learning English as a Foreign Language: On Taiwan College Students' Ability of Discriminating English Consonant Cluster

近來國內學習英語風氣大盛，政府也極力推動國小三年級開始學英語；但是否有必要將英語之學習年齡步步向下推進呢？英語是否越早學越好（亦即正面的年齡效應）？本研究試圖從語音知覺的角度去探討台灣地區學童學習英語的年齡效應。本計畫之先驅研究（Lin， Chang， & Cheung， 2004）顯現在某些特殊狀況下，確有明顯之年齡效應。本研究繼承此先驅研究，再進一步探討不同年齡開始學習英語的大學生，在控制總學習年數的情況下，對英語的子音串（consonant cluster）的知覺能力。同時進一步探討早學英語對中文的某些語音的分辨能力是否有負面影響。綜合實驗一與二的發現，有以下結論：(1)含有/l/與/r/子音串的minimal pair，相較於非此類minimal pair，對於年齡效果的測試更敏感，更能彰顯出學習英語起始年齡的效果；(2)當中、英文的minimal pair聽辨採混合測試時，兩者之間的分數具有正相關。

There has been a strong current in Taiwan to learn English as early as possible. For example， the Ministry of Education in Taiwan is implementing a policy of formally teaching English in schools from the 3rd grade on. However， in learning a foreign language， is it truly “the earlier， the better”? Can the enormous cost involved in early language education be balanced by the putative benefit of early learning? Without concrete demonstration of such benefit， it would be irresponsible to implement such a policy in haste. The present research attempted to determine age effects in learning English in Taiwan in the domain of speech perception which should be the easiest domain to show any positive age effects. In addition， since a previous study (Lin， Chang， ＆ Cheung， 2004) did find positive age effects in English learning in Taiwan， the present research followed the lead of this early study by concentrating on the perception of English consonant clusters， and by investigating possible negative age effects of learning English on the perception of Chinese phonemes. Based on our findings in two experiments on discriminating minimal pairs， it was concluded that (1) consonant clusters containing /l/ vs. /r/ were sensitive to the test of age effects; (2) when the two languages were tested in a mixed format performance on discriminating English and Chinese minimal pairs was positively correlated.