Factors affecting successful late learners' phonemic discrimination between /l/ and /r/ in English

The view “the earlier the better” (e.g., [10]) may be a myth in a foreign language instructional setting (e.g., [1]). To identify successful late learners, this study compares early and late learners studying English as a foreign language in the situation of classroom minimal exposure to English, focusing on the perception of English consonants ([l, r]) produced by different talkers with and without noise. In addition, it clarifies what factors have influenced the success of late learners in perceiving the difficult phonemic contrast. The findings did not show any age effects of English input on the phonemic discrimination, regardless of the noise and talker variability. The successful late learners, who outperformed the early learners and did not differ from the native speaker group, were generally proficient in English and actively used English both in and outside of classroom.