Learning to speak in a second language: Does multiple talker production training benefit production of English vowels in Arabic children?

High-variability phonetic training (HVPT) has been shown to be highly effective in improving secondlanguage (L2) perception in adults, and to also benefit production. In contrast, recent studies have suggested that children may benefit more from low-variability phonetic training (LVPT), in particular for production. The present study compares HVPT and LVPT articulatory training for production and perception of Standard Southern British English (SSBE) vowels in children in a non-immersion context. Forty-six monolingual Arabic children aged 8-12 years were randomly assigned to single(LVPT) or multi-talker (HVPT) training. Both groups completed five articulatory training sessions on 18 vowels and a battery of perception and production tests evaluated improvement. The results showed that the LVPT group performed better not only in production, but also in category discrimination. The results support previous studies that have suggested that LVPT training might be more successful with children.