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The effect of pitch gesture observation on L2 English intonation production across learning phases

ORCiD logo with link | Juntendo University
 | Bunkyo University
 | Nagoya University of Foreign Studies
 | Ritsumeikan University
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

This article was made Open Access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license through payment of an APC by or on behalf of the authors.

Published online: 21 September 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/jslp.26032.hor
Abstract
Observing pitch gestures facilitates L2 intonation perception, but its impact on intonation production and performance over time remains unclear. Using a pre-, post-, and delayed-test design, this study examined how pitch gesture observation influences L2 English intonation production. Twenty Japanese learners of English (10 in the gesture condition and 10 in the nongesture condition) completed imitative repetition and situational reading tasks. Production accuracy was assessed at three time points. The results revealed a significant interaction between gesture condition and time, indicating different patterns of performance change across testing phases, with group differences emerging only at post-test. These findings suggest that pitch gestures influence the temporal pattern of intonation production performance rather than uniformly improving performance over time. Pedagogically, pitch gestures may provide effective instructional support during the early stages of intonation learning.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
  • 3.Method
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Materials and research design
    • 3.3Training procedure
    • 3.4Testing procedure
    • 3.5Data analyses
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Overview of analyses
    • 4.2Descriptive statistics
    • 4.3Main effects and interaction
    • 4.4Follow-up analyses
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1Summary of the key findings
    • 5.2Interpretation of the gesture × Time interaction
    • 5.3Limitations
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgments
  • Generative AI statement
  • Notes
  • References
References (31)
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