Comprehensibility improvements in integrated pronunciation instruction
A comparison of instructional methods and task effects
Integration of pronunciation into content courses is appealing because of its potential in helping learners apply
their developing pronunciation skills in spontaneous speech. However, the effectiveness of pronunciation instruction (PI) when it
is integrated still needs to be demonstrated. This study evaluates whether a group receiving integrated PI (targeting
suprasegmentals) improved in controlled and spontaneous speech tasks, compared to a group who did not receive any specific PI. We
measured improvements as comprehensibility ratings and proportion of perceived word stress and vowel reduction errors. The results
show that integration appears to be beneficial overall, including in spontaneous speech tasks when comprehensibility is measured.
We interpret these findings considering the different tasks used and examine the contribution of the specific instructional
approach (form-focused with communicative contextualization) to the observed changes between pre- and post-test.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Integrated pronunciation instruction
- 2.1The effect of tasks used to measure pronunciation improvements
- 2.2Suprasegmental dimensions and comprehensibility
- 3.The Current Study
- 4.Methods
- 4.1Participants
- 4.2Instructional targets
- 4.3Teaching and feedback implementation
- 4.3.1Dedicated pronunciation lessons
- 4.3.2Integrated instruction
- 4.4Speech samples
- 4.5Rating of speech samples
- 5.Results
- 5.1Data preparation
- 5.2Comprehensibility Ratings for Integrated and Control groups
- 5.3Comprehensibility Ratings for Integrated Subgroups
- 5.4Word stress and vowel reduction ratings
- 6.General discussion
- 6.1Effects of type of instruction
- 6.2Effects of tasks
- 6.3Global and specific ratings
- 7.Conclusion and open questions
- Acknowledgments
- Note
-
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Cited by (1)
Cited by one other publication
Mora, Joan C. & Ingrid Mora-Plaza
2023.
From Research in the Lab to Pedagogical Practices in the EFL Classroom: The Case of Task-Based Pronunciation Teaching.
Education Sciences 13:10
► pp. 1042 ff.
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