scholarly journals From Focus on Sounds to Focus on Words in English Pronunciation Instruction

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jolanta Szpyra-Kozłowska ◽  
Sławomir Stasiak
Keyword(s):  
Secondary School ◽  
Major Goal ◽  
Special Training ◽  
Pronunciation Instruction ◽  
Successful Communication ◽  
Language Classroom ◽  
Phonetic Errors ◽  
Accented English ◽  
Designed Materials ◽  
Phonetic Instruction

The paper addresses a very important aspect of Polish-accented English, namely the issue of frequent phonetic errors made by Polish learners which do not result from their inability to produce foreign sounds correctly, but which stem from various interference factors (e.g foreign pronounced as [fo’rejn]). Following Szpyra-Kozłowska’s (in press a) claims that such errors hinder successful communication far more than other segmental and suprasegmental inaccuracies and should thus be treated as a top pedagogical priority, what is suggested is a shift in phonetic instruction from the focus on the production of sounds and prosodies to the focus on the pronunciation of problematic words. Our major goal is to demonstrate how this proposal can be implemented in the language classroom. The authors present a report on the experiment in which a group of 25 Polish secondary school pupils has undergone a special training in the pronunciation of 50 commonly mispronounced words with the use of special, teacher-designed materials. The effectiveness of the employed procedure as well as the pupils’ reactions to it are examined and pedagogical conclusions are drawn.

“No” — A Case Study in Corrective Feedback in a Secondary Chinese Language Classroom in Australia

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 1032
Author(s):  
Xinxin Li ◽  
Hui Huang
Keyword(s):  
Secondary School ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Corrective Feedback ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Language Classroom ◽  
Grammatical Errors ◽  
Chinese Teacher ◽  
Chinese Teaching ◽  
Overall Effectiveness

Corrective feedback has been studied for decades in classrooms both for children and adults. Among different subjects, language learning, especially second language (L2) learning is one of the significant targets of corrective feedback studies. Compared to English and other European languages, however, Chinese as L2 classroom has get little attention. This paper investigates what types of corrective feedback (CF) a teacher of Chinese working at a secondary school in Melbourne provided to what kinds of errors made by students, and the effectiveness of each CF type. The data was obtained from 2 random lessons and the parts involving CF were transcribed to further analyze. The results suggest that Chinese beginners made more mistakes in pronunciation and vocabulary than in grammar, however, the teacher provided feedback to all of the lexical and grammatical errors, ignoring nearly half of the phonological mistakes. In addition, the overall effectiveness of CF was not satisfactory, especially for elicitations and recasts, which were used the most commonly by the teacher. Some pedagogical implications for Chinese teaching and Chinese teacher training are also provided.

Intersecting scapes and new millennium identities in language learning

2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 373-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Higgins
Keyword(s):  
Secondary School ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Urban Residents ◽  
Language Classroom ◽  
Working Class Students ◽  
University Level

This paper examines how flows of people, media, money, technology, and ideologies move through the world, with attention to how these scapes (Appadurai 1990, 1996, 2013) shape identity construction among language learners, both in and out of classrooms. After illustrating intersecting scapes in sociolinguistic terms, I explore the relevance of these ideas to identity formation among language learners, using three case studies. First, I examine the mediascape of hip hop in the ideoscape of education in Hong Kong, where an ELT Rap curriculum was designed for working class students in a low-banded secondary school. Next, I discuss how the confluence of transnationals and cosmopolitan urban residents in Tanzania provides a range of identity options for learners of Swahili that challenge nation-state-based associations of language. Finally, I consider how learners’ engagement in anime and manga from the mediascape is taken up in an introductory university-level Japanese language classroom in Hawai’i. These examples demonstrate how individuals are increasingly learning and using additional languages in the contexts of cultural mélange and new identity zones.

Segmental error patterns in Finnish-accented English

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Camilla Søballe Horslund ◽  
Parker F. Van Nostrand
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Foreign Accent ◽  
Language Experience ◽  
Error Patterns ◽  
Pronunciation Instruction ◽  
Accented English ◽  
Second Language Speech Production ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Sheer Number

Abstract Research suggests that explicit pronunciation teaching improves second language speech production, but language teachers often lack the relevant knowledge to teach pronunciation. This study examined segmental error patterns in Finnish-accented English and the relationship between segmental errors and foreign accent ratings in two groups differing in amount of second language experience. Our study identified a number of common segmental error patterns in Finnish-accented English, which may guide formal pronunciation instruction. We further found that the sheer number of segmental errors in a sentence affected foreign accent ratings as did the number of vowel errors in a sentence. We speculate that the detrimental effect of vowel errors may be related to the finding that vowel errors resulted in non-English segments more often than consonant errors did. Finally, we found a facilitative effect of second language experience on foreign accent rating that cannot be reduced to number of segmental errors, despite the finding that number of consonant errors was reduced with increased second language experience.

scholarly journals Cinema as a didactic tool in the secondary school foreign language classroom: French

2021 ◽  
pp. 129-147
Author(s):  
Imad Boussif ◽  
Estefanía Sánchez Auñón
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Secondary School ◽  
Empirical Study ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Foreign Language Learners ◽  
Language Classroom ◽  
Teaching Unit

The seventh art forms an essential part of the students’ daily lives; additionally, it has been asserted that it is a highly advantageous didactic tool for high school foreign language learners. Thus, the purpose of this empirical study is twofold: to explore high school learners’ perception on the didactic exploitation of films in the French classroom, and to determine whether or not the cinema-based approach is as beneficial for high school French students as it seems. Accordingly, a cinema-based teaching unit was put into practice in two high school French classrooms and, afterwards, the thirty-five participants were asked to fill in a questionnaire in order to examine their views on this methodology and analyse its effects on their language learning process. The results obtained have revealed that high school French students have a very positive opinion on the cinema-based approach and that this method is motivating and helps learners to enhance their linguistic and sociocultural competences.

scholarly journals The Impact of L1 Metaphorical Comprehension on L2 Metaphorical Comprehension of Iraqi EFL Learners

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 8
Author(s):  
Mahmoud Arif ◽  
IMRAN HO ABDULLAH
Keyword(s):  
Secondary School ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Major Goal ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
George Lakoff ◽  
Convenience Sampling ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Self Administered Questionnaire

The major goal of this research is to investigate learners’ metaphorical comprehension in L1 and its effect on the metaphorical comprehension in L2 by Iraqi EFL learners at secondary school. In which, they encounter difficulties understanding English texts and lectures, primarily when metaphor is included, which leads to the misunderstanding of some or even the whole material. To this end, the research will utilize the ‘Conceptual Metaphor Theory’ by George Lakoff and Mark Turner (1980), and Cummins' Linguistic Interdependence Hypothesis (1979). The type of the survey of the data collection is a self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire is classified into two divisions: the demographic part that gives a general background of the participants, and the part that includes 30 Arabic metaphoric proverbs and other 30 English proverbs. Each proverb is followed by four distractors from which a participant is required to choose the correct meaning for a certain proverb. The questionnaire was administered to 252 Iraqi convenience sampling. The findings showed that the participants who are more skilled in Arabic metaphor performed better in English metaphor. In addition to the significance of this study to the literature where, up to the researcher knowledge, no study has tackled the effect of the L1 on L2 in the Iraqi context, it presents a pedagogical contribution. In which, the study will draw the attention of the syllabus designers to the significance of developing cognitive skills of learners in L1 to achieve a better cognitive skills in L2.

scholarly journals Mitigating negative transference in foreign language articulatory phonetics: Revisiting explicit instruction

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 11-25
Author(s):  
Lisa C. Wagner ◽  
Mónica Rodríguez-Castro ◽  
André Zampaulo
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Explicit Instruction ◽  
Reading Speed ◽  
Oral Communication ◽  
Assessment Tools ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Pronunciation Instruction ◽  
Language Classroom ◽  
Articulatory Phonetics ◽  
Post Test

The development of oral communication competence is acknowledged as generally overlooked or misunderstood in the literature. The aim of this article is to discuss results from an investigation into the use of explicit instruction as a pedagogical approach to mitigate pronunciation interference among third-year university students learning Spanish as a second-language. Two groups were formed: an experimental group, which received explicit phonetic instruction, and a second group, which served as the control group. Three raters independently evaluated phonetic accuracy in pretest and post-test sessions. Results suggest that pronunciation instruction leads to statistically significant improvement with regard to syllabification, prosodic stress, natural reading speed, intonation patterns, and the pronunciation of rhotic, voiced stop, approximant, and fricative consonants. Results also indicate that the assessment tools developed in this study are appropriate for measuring the overall enhancement of Spanish pronunciation accuracy, and could therefore be used in the foreign language classroom.

scholarly journals COMICS IN THE UKRAINIAN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM: BUILDING SOCIO-CULTURAL COMPETENCE OF SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS

2021 ◽  
pp. 53-60
Author(s):  
Laryssa Zyazyun ◽  
◽  
Maryna Dziuba ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Competence ◽  
Secondary School ◽  
Creative Thinking ◽  
Secondary School Students ◽  
Lesson Plan ◽  
Language Instruction ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
School Students ◽  
Language Classroom ◽  
Educational Potential

The article investigates the instructional potential of comics in building the socio-cultural competence of secondary school students in the Ukrainian language classroom. The urgency of the problem is related to the task of reforming Ukrainian school education to create learning conditions aimed at the development of a learner as a subject of culture and multicultural language personality, able to successfully engage in social interaction with the bearers of another culture. Moreover, there is a lack of research of the educational potential of comics in the Ukrainian context, which also determines the relevance of this article that aims to explore the ways of using comics in the Ukrainian language classroom to boost the socio-cultural competence of secondary school students. Apart from reading comics, the creation of them in the classroom is extensively used as a means of building socio-cultural competence in the context of world education. It is the syncretism of graphic and text-verbal components that makes the genre of comics a unique teaching tool. Although using comics in language instruction is viewed as an innovative technique of building socio-cultural competence as well as enhancing the communication skills of students, it has limited application in Ukrainian secondary schools. Therefore, based on the analysis of the available research and the authors’ experience, the paper proves the effectiveness of comics in boosting socio-cultural knowledge, increasing motivation to learn, developing critical and creative thinking of students. The authors of the article substantiate the instructional advantages of using comics in language teaching and offer a lesson plan in the Ukrainian language for 6th-grade school students.

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