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4 results

  • 35 - Bridging the Gap between Bilingual Phonetic Research and Pronunciation Teaching

  • from Part VI - Variables and Outcomes of Bilingual Speech
  • Edited by Mark Amengual, University of California, Santa Cruz
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Bilingual Phonetics and Phonology
    Published online:
    14 November 2024
    Print publication:
    21 November 2024, pp 791-812

  • Summary

    Pronunciation teaching is often based on assumptions that learners are monolingual speakers, with the sound system of their native language determining the segmental and suprasegmental difficulties that mark learners’ foreign accents. However, many, if not a majority of speakers of other languages come to pronunciation with more than one language under their command. These bilingual/multilingual speakers are the norm in a globalized world, but how we teach pronunciation rarely accounts for the knowledge and skills these speakers bring to the learning of pronunciation. This chapter describes how the characteristics of bilingual speakers suggest how pronunciation teaching can be reimagined to take into account the range and flexibility of bilingual speakers in using multiple languages. Specifically, we argue that taking a nativeness viewpoint is inconsistent with taking a bilingual viewpoint and calls for pedagogical techniques that build on the kinds of needs bilingual speakers have in pronouncing additional languages.

  • Is L2 pronunciation affected by increased task complexity in pronunciation-unfocused speaking tasks?

  • Ingrid Mora-Plaza, Joan C. Mora, Mireia Ortega, Cristina Aliaga-Garcia
  • Journal:
    Studies in Second Language Acquisition , First View
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    31 October 2024, pp. 1-33
    • Article
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  • This study examines the effects of task complexity on second language (L2) pronunciation accuracy and global pronunciation measures in pronunciation-unfocused tasks and assesses the relationship between acoustic and listener-based pronunciation measures. Eighty-two Catalan/Spanish learners of English performed simple and complex versions of a problem-solving monologic speaking task, for which the oral stops /p, t, k/ and vowel contrasts /iː/-/ɪ/ and /æ/-/ᴧ/ were embedded in the lexical items used to perform the task. Pronunciation accuracy was gauged through acoustic measurements of laryngeal timing (voice onset time), vowel contrastiveness and nativelikeness (Mahalanobis distances), and native speakers’ ratings of comprehensibility and accentedness. Results revealed detrimental effects of increased task complexity on the productions of oral stops and speech comprehensibility and accentedness; however, no consistent task complexity effects were found on vowel accuracy. The analysis also revealed an association between segmental accuracy and global dimensions of L2 speech.

  • 7 - Pronunciation

  • Shawn Loewen, Michigan State University, Masatoshi Sato, Universidad Andres Bello, Chile
  • Book:
    A Practical Guide to Second Language Teaching and Learning
    Published online:
    03 May 2024
    Print publication:
    30 May 2024, pp 142-162

  • Summary

    This chapter focuses on the learning and teaching of second language pronunciation. It starts by asking basic questions such as: Why is it so hard to sound like a “native speaker”? and Should second language learners even sound like native speakers? The chapter reviews the components of pronunciation including phoneme, segmentals, and suprasegmentals. It then explores the topics of comprehensibility, intelligibility, and accentedness, in order to consider which are most important for second language communication and learning. It argues that native-like pronunciation should not be the goal of pronunciation instruction; rather, the goal should be comprehensibility (i.e., how well a second language learner is understood by a listener). It reviews other issues related to pronunciation learning such as the distinction between receptive and productive knowledge, the role of identity in maintaining a first-language accent, and the role that biology plays in affecting second language pronunciation mastery. Finally, the chapter explores both explicit and implicit methods of pronunciation instruction.

  • Lexical correlates of comprehensibility versus accentedness in second language speech*

  • KAZUYA SAITO, STUART WEBB, PAVEL TROFIMOVICH, TALIA ISAACS
  • Journal:
    Bilingualism: Language and Cognition / Volume 19 / Issue 3 / May 2016
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    17 June 2015, pp. 597-609

  • The current project investigated the extent to which several lexical aspects of second language (L2) speech – appropriateness, fluency, variation, sophistication, abstractness, sense relations – interact to influence native speakers’ judgements of comprehensibility (ease of understanding) and accentedness (linguistic nativelikeness). Extemporaneous speech elicited from 40 French speakers of English with varied L2 proficiency levels was first evaluated by 10 native-speaking raters for comprehensibility and accentedness. Subsequently, the dataset was transcribed and analyzed for 12 lexical factors. Various lexical properties of L2 speech were found to be associated with L2 comprehensibility, and especially lexical accuracy (lemma appropriateness) and complexity (polysemy), indicating that these lexical variables are associated with successful L2 communication. In contrast, native speakers’ accent judgements seemed to be linked to surface-level details of lexical content (abstractness) and form (variation, morphological accuracy) rather than to its conceptual and contextual details (e.g., lemma appropriateness, polysemy).