Intelligent personal assistants and L2 pronunciation development: focus on English past -ed

This study investigates an Intelligent Personal Assistant’s (IPA) ability to assist English as a Second Language (ESL) learners in developing their phonological awareness, perception, and production of the allomorphy in regular past tense marking in English (e.g. talk[t], play[d] and add[ɪd]). The study addresses the following questions: Can the pedagogical use of IPAs improve learners’ pronunciation of -ed allomorphy in terms of phonological awareness, perception, and production? What are learners’ attitudes toward IPAs? The results suggest that participants improved in their ability to articulate their phonological awareness regarding the target form, and that their attitudes toward the technology was positive in terms of the four measures adopted to assess their experience (i.e. learnability, usability, motivation, and willingness to use). We discuss these findings and emphasize the pedagogical potential of IPAs for the development of L2 pronunciation, as well as their ability to personalize learning and consequently extend the reach of the language classroom.

Cenerentola entra a palazzo: il nuovo ruolo della pronuncia nell’insegnamento linguistico

This paper provides an overview of the current status of L2 pronunciation teaching and shows that there is a greater appreciation for L2 pronunciation teaching today than there was in the past. The paper starts by reviewing the main theoretical approaches in pronunciation teaching of the past 70 years and introduces today’s approach focusing on ‘speech intelligibility’ rather than on the achievement of native-like pronun-ciation. It then addresses the following issues: what we mean by foreign accent and speech intelligibility; how foreign accent can affect communication and speakers’ integration in society; what challenges present-day L2 pronunciation teachers; how technology can help.

Explicit versus non-explicit prosodic training in the learning of Spanish L2 stress contrasts by French listeners

Different methods to acquire a language can contribute differently to learning success. In the present study we tested the success of L2 stress contrasts acquisition, when ab initio learners were taught or not about the theoretic nature of L2 stress contrasts. In two 4-hour perceptual training methods, French-speaking listeners received either (a) explicit instructions about Spanish stress patterns and perception activities commonly used in L2 pronunciation courses or (b) no explicit instructions and a unique perception activity, a shape/word matching task. Results showed that French-speaking listeners improved their ability to identify and discriminate stress contrasts in Spanish after training. However, there was no significant difference between explicit and non-explicit training nor was there an effect on stress processing under different phonetic variability conditions. This suggests that in L2 stress acquisition, non-explicit training may benefit ab initio learners as much as explicit instruction and activities used in L2 pronunciation courses.

L2 pronunciation research and teaching

Research on L2 pronunciation needs to occur in a much wider range of languages in order to ensure that findings are not just applicable to dominant languages. This paper argues that research on a wider variety of languages will be valuable for understanding different contexts of learning/instruction, different types and combinations of phonological features, and different instructional approaches. The field especially needs two parallel and interrelated threads of research and teaching-oriented publications. The first is descriptions of and materials for teaching pronunciation in particular languages. The second is research that is built around questions of practical interest and theoretically-motivated models of L2 speech perception and production.

Assessing the state of the art in longitudinal L2 pronunciation research

Longitudinal research methods often call to mind studies of various lengths. However, longitudinal research involves complex decisions related to study length, number of sessions, and session spacing, and these longitudinal choices must be coordinated with other aspects of research methodology. In this synthesis, I analyze 39 longitudinal L2 pronunciation studies that were published between 2006 and 2021 and did not include a pronunciation-specific intervention. I examine longitudinal design choices in light of participant sample characteristics such as age and context of learning, and measurement framework characteristics, which include choices related to target structures and tasks. Among other findings, results point to a lack of longer-term, multiwave studies dealing with pronunciation development. I offer suggestions for future work that can enhance the scope of L2 pronunciation research as well as recommendations for conducting and reporting longitudinal research.

Functional Load and the Teaching-Learning Relationship in L2 Pronunciation

Though frequent recourse has been made to the functional load (or FL) principle in establishing priorities for L2 pronunciation teaching, it remains an under-theorized and relatively under-utilized concept. This is despite the existence of empirical evidence pointing to correlations between the FL ranking of phonemic contrasts and a) the effect that the absence of particular contrasts has on the comprehensibility of speech, and b) their occurrence at different levels of proficiency. Previous studies have found that errors involving high FL sound contrasts are linked with educed comprehensibility, and have also found that high FL errors are less common in learners at higher proficiency levels. Taken together, these findings suggest that language learners tend to pay more attention to high FL contrasts and incorporate them into their repertoires more readily than low FL contrasts, possibly because the high FL contrasts are more salient in terms of contrastive potential and frequency of occurrence. The concept of FL therefore appears to be relevant in considering the relative ease (or difficulty) of learning and teaching particular features, and in understanding the relationship between learning and teaching. Frequent calls have been made for FL considerations to inform the setting of priorities in L2 pronunciation teaching, for example. In this mini-review I will explore and re-evaluate the concept of FL in terms of both theoretical formulation and empirical application, aiming to identify both its contributions and its limitations.

COVID silver linings

The global pandemic caused a storm of cancellations of professional conferences and professional travel, but the storm has also had technological silver linings in opportunities for professional development including greater numbers of webinars, virtual conferences, and new uses of videoconferencing. We expect that many of these new expansions of professional development will continue in the field of L2 pronunciation.

Exploring the Complexity of the L2 Intonation System: An Acoustic and Eye-Tracking Study

Phonological research has demonstrated that English intonation, variably referred to as prosody, is a multidimensional and multilayered system situated at the interface of information structure, morphosyntactic structure, phonological phenomena, and pragmatic functions. The structural and functional complexity of the intonational system, however, is largely under-addressed in L2 pronunciation teaching, leading to a lack of spontaneous use of intonation despite successful imitation in classrooms. Focusing on contrastive and implicational sentence stress, this study explored the complexity of the English intonation system by investigating how L1 English and Mandarin-English L2 speakers use multiple acoustic features (i.e., pitch range, pitch level, duration, and intensity) in signaling contrastive and implicational information and how one acoustic feature (maximum pitch level) is affected by information structure (contrast), morphosyntactic structure (phrasal boundary), and a phonological phenomenon (declination) in L1 English and Mandarin-English L2 speakers' speech. Using eye-tracking technology, we also investigated (1) L1 English and Mandarin-English L2 speakers' real-time processing of lexical items that carry information structure (i.e., contrast) and typically receive stress in L1 speakers' speech; (2) the influence of visual enhancement (italics and bold) on L1 English and Mandarin-English L2 speakers' processing of contrastive information; and (3) L1 English and Mandarin-English L2 speakers' processing of pictures with contrastive information. Statistical analysis using linear mixed-effects models showed that L1 English speakers and Mandarin-English L2 speakers differed in their use of acoustic cues in signaling contrastive and implicational information. They also differed in the use of maximum pitch level in signaling sentence stress influenced by contrast, phrasal boundary, and declination. We did not find differences in L1 English and Mandarin-English L2 speakers' processing of contrastive and implicational information at the sentence level, but the two groups of participants differ in their processing of contrastive information in passages and pictures. These results suggest that processing limitations may be the reason why L2 speakers did not use English intonation spontaneously. The findings of this study also suggest that Complexity Theory (CT), which emphasizes the complex and dynamic nature of intonation, is a theoretical framework that has the potential of bridging the gap between L2 phonology and L2 pronunciation teaching.