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Part of
Expanding Individual Difference Research in the Interaction Approach: Investigating learners, instructors, and other interlocutors
Edited by Laura Gurzynski-Weiss
[AILA Applied Linguistics Series 16] 2017
► pp. 201–223

Chapter 9
Investigating the relationship between instructor research training and pronunciation-related instruction and oral corrective feedback

| Texas Tech University

Although the role of the instructor in classroom-based L2 pronunciation development has begun to receive attention in the empirical literature (e.g., Baker, 2011a, 2011b, 2014; Baldwin & Long, 2013; Buss, 2016; Couper, 2016; A. Y. Long, 2013), the extent to which the quantity and quality of classroom-based pronunciation-related instruction and oral corrective feedback vary across instructors remains unknown. Based on Baldwin and Long’s (2013) finding that L2 Spanish instructors’ stated beliefs about pronunciation instruction and feedback differed according to graduate-level training (in literature or linguistics), the present study explored the relationship between instructor research training – operationalized as training in phonetics/phonology – and provision of pronunciation-related instruction and oral corrective feedback in the classroom. Specifically, the pronunciation-related instruction and oral corrective feedback practices of eight graduate student instructors of intermediate-level L2 Spanish were examined. All instructors were native speakers of English, and half had received training in phonetics/phonology as part of their graduate coursework. Observations of classroom lessons (over the course of an academic semester) and an analysis of pronunciation-related oral corrective feedback provided by the instructor demonstrated that pronunciation-related instruction, though limited and inconsistent, was marginally linked to instructor research training; however, research training was not related to observed feedback patterns.

Keywords: corrective feedback, instructor individual characteristics, L2 pronunciation, L2 Spanish, research training
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Background
    • Instructor ID characteristics and classroom-based SLA
    • L2 pronunciation learning
      • The role of instruction
      • The role of feedback
    • The role of the instructor in L2 pronunciation learning
    • Motivation for the present study
  • Method
    • Participants and setting
    • Materials and procedure
    • Data coding and analysis
  • Results
    • Pronunciation-related instruction
    • Instructor provision of oral corrective feedback
  • Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 12 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/aals.16.09lon
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