My father is a native Spanish speaker. He struggles with English pronunciation, and even though he has studied many English courses, he seems to be stuck. Once I talked with a phonetics teacher, with whom I don't have any contact now, and he told me that if an English learner learns to pronounce well in the early stages (or in any stage) of their learning process, then they would learn more rapidly.
I remember that he told me, that if a person pronounces well a certain word, when someone else says the word, then the brain would recognize and understand the word much quicker than if the person would pronounce it wrongly.
I haven't had luck in finding papers that support this idea. Does anyone have any references to research on this topic?
Thanks a lot for your help.
PS I write here and not in http://ell.stackexchange.com because this site looks more scientific.
