Discrimination of English tone contours by Polish learners

Abstract

In the current study, we test the discrimination of four basic English tone contours in monosyllabic words by Polish learners using an AXB task and we compare these results to the results of an identi fi cation test. Discrimination does not require access to phonological labels and is claimed to tap core auditory mechanism. Relatively high discrimination performance by Polish learners and poor identi fi cation performance indicate that dif fi culties with correct identi fi cation of English tones are solely dif fi culties with labelling.