Técnica Shadowing para enseñar comprensión oral a estudiantes de EFL de nivel A1

Shadowing is a listening technique that develops the bottom-up process (the understanding of the smallest units of the audio input such as individual sounds) of the listening skill by training the learners’ ears to recognize phonemes, words, and thus phrases. It is said this is a useful technique for the development of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ listening skills. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the effect of the shadowing technique on the listening skill of A1-level EFL learners from Luisa de Jesús Cordero High School. An explanatory sequential mixed method design will be carried out by using the listening part of the A2 Key for Schools from Cambridge Language Assessment exam and a close-ended survey to assess the impact of shadowing on the students’ listening performance and their perception of shadowing. For this purpose, experimental and control groups were carried out. The study outcomes provide information about how shadowing, as a technique to teach listening, has influenced English learners’ listening skill and their perspectives in an Ecuadorian high school setting.Shadowing es una técnica de escucha que desarrolla la comprensión de las unidades más pequeñas de significado de un audio, como los sonidos individuales (bottom-up skills) al entrenar el oído de los estudiantes para reconocer fonemas, palabras y, por lo tanto, frases. Se considera que esta técnica es útil para el desarrollo de las habilidades auditivas de los estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera. Por lo tanto, este estudio tiene como objetivo analizar el efecto de la técnica de shadowing en la habilidad auditiva de los estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera de nivel A1 de la Unidad Educativa Luisa de Jesús Cordero. Se llevará a cabo un diseño de método mixto secuencial explicativo utilizando la parte de comprensión auditiva del examen A2 Key for Schools de Cambridge Language Assessment, una encuesta y un grupo focal para evaluar el impacto de la técnica de shadowing en el rendimiento auditivo de los estudiantes y la percepción de este. Para ello, un grupo experimental y otro de control fueron llevados a cabo. Los resultados del estudio pretenden proporcionar información sobre cómo shadowing como una técnica para enseñar a escuchar ha influenciado en la competencia auditiva de los aprendices del idioma inglés, así como sus perspectivas en el contexto de un colegio ecuatoriano

Improving Phonemic Awareness in ESL Pronunciation Using Shadowing During Tutorials: Implications for ESL Teachers

Although there are numerous reasons to improve pronunciation instruction, the teaching of phonologic structures in English has become less popular among k-12 classrooms. This study proposes that the use of a relatively new technique may positively improve ESL students\u27 pronunciation of American Standard English. This technique is known as shadowing. The data obtained was analyzed and evaluated in terms of phonological structures. The motivation to do this particular study came from previous research concerning word boundaries and phonological structures of consonants, in addition to my previous experience as an ESL tutor and instructor at SCSU. Students were making too many phonemic errors. This study will provide evidence for specific effects on phonemic awareness and also in regards to fluency and accuracy. To accomplish this, a shadowing methodology was used. The participants performed three types of audio-recorded speech samples both before and after their weekly tutorial sessions. Each would serve as a pre-test/post-test. First, spontaneous speech samples were used. Second, rehearsed speech samples were used. Third, read aloud activities were conducted to produce recorded speech samples. The recordings of speech samples were provided by four native speakers of English, two Caucasian males and two Caucasian females. This generated the authentic speech samples necessary for data analysis. The activities stemmed from a modified activity from the St. Cloud State ESL Department\u27s Tutorial packet. The samples were assessed by native speakers of English (speech sample raters) who listened to samples and scored each one based on a speech rubric provided by the researcher. The results of the data collected (scores from raters) were calculated and presented in the form of paired TTests. Common problems associated with pronunciation and whether the use of shadowing leads to an increased level of phonemic awareness were the target objectives for the elicited data. The students were divided into two groups. Student Group, A used a written transcript while making the shadowing attempts and Student Group B did not. The results indicated that most of the comparisons did not yield statistically significant results (gender and language yielded no significance). However, even though two of the mean scores for groups A and B ( comparing pre and post-test) yielded a difference, none of them were statistically significant as neither were equal or greater than the Alpha value of 0.05

Advanced Students’ Oral Fluency: The Neglected Component in the CLT Classroom?

Udostępnienie publikacji Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego finansowane w ramach projektu „Doskonałość naukowa kluczem do doskonałości kształcenia”. Projekt realizowany jest ze środków Europejskiego Funduszu Społecznego w ramach Programu Operacyjnego Wiedza Edukacja Rozwój; nr umowy: POWER.03.05.00-00-Z092/17-00

多重分解能のポステリオグラムを用いた日本人英語を対 象とした流暢性推定と韻律誤り分析

学位の種別: 修士University of Tokyo(東京大学

Working Memory and Second‐Language Accent Acquisition

We explored the proposal that overt repetition of verbal information improves the acquisition of a native accent in a second language. Mandarin-speaking Chinese learners of English were recorded while repeating and reading out English sentences before and after one of three treatments: (1) Repeating native English sentences subvocally, "covert repetition,"(2) Repeating sentences out loud, "overt repetition," and(3) Unfilled time of comparable duration. The sentences were rated by English speakers for their nativeness, fluency, and intelligibility. Overt repetition improved accent rating for read-out sentences. Covert repetition did not. Neither condition improved accent rating for repeated sentences, suggesting that immediate repetition depends on temporary rather than long-term representations. Our results provide some support for the use of overt repetition in accent learning. From a theoretical perspective, an interpretation is proposed in terms of a separation between phonological and articulatory coding within the phonological loop component of working memory

Investigating Effects of a Closely Linked Four-Skills Approach on English Speaking Fluency Development

This paper presents the results of an investigation intothe effects of a teaching approach that integrates the four skillsbased on linked-skills tasks, i.e., an approach that employs asequence of tasks based on the same text but using differentlanguage skills, on English fluency in Japanese universityclassrooms. Students were instructed to watch an easy news clip,then read the text, answer comprehension questions, write asummary and reaction, and speak about it to a few partners. Theteaching procedure includes such fluency-enhancing elements asrecycling and deep processing of vocabulary (i.e., using words inmultiple contexts), using formulaic sequences, andautomatization. Participants in this study were second-yearupper-intermediate level English majors taking a Media Englishcourse. Classes met twice a week for the academic year.Quantitative data were gathered from tests administered at thebeginning and at the end of the year. Speaking fluency wasmeasured using an interview test that assessed the rate of speechand a standard college speaking test. Results showed thatspeaking fluency significantly improved as measured by bothtests, thus lending support to the adaptation of a skills-integratedteaching approach

The Effect of Shadowing in Learning L2 Segments: A Perspective from Phonetic Convergence

This study aimed to investigate the role that phonetic convergence plays in the acquisition of L2 segments. In particular, it examined whether phonetic convergence towards native speakers could help Arabic-speaking second-language (L2) learners of English improve their pronunciation of four problematic English segments (/p, v, ɛ, oʊ/). To do so, the study went through several phases of experimental studies. Phonetic convergence was first explored in the productions of Arabic L2 learners towards five different English native model talkers in non-interactive setting. Five XAB perceptual similarity judgments and acoustic measurements of VOT, vowel duration, F0, and F1*F2 were used to evaluate phonetic convergence.Based mainly on perceptual measures of phonetic convergence, learners were divided evenly between two groups. C-group (convergence group) received phonetic production training from the model talkers to whom they showed the highest degree of phonetic convergence, while D-group (divergence group) received training from the model talkers they showed divergence from or the least convergence to. Training lasted three consecutive days with target segments (i.e., /p, v, ɛ, oʊ/) presented in nonsense words. They were trained using the shadowing technique that used low-variability training paradigm in which each learner received training from one native model talker. Native-speaker judgments on segmental intelligibility indicated both groups showed significant improvement on the post-test; however, no significant differences were found between groups in terms of the overall magnitude of this change. Perceived convergence in learners’ speech failed to explain the improvement. However, some patterns of acoustic convergence towards their trainers, regardless of group, predicted the overall segmental intelligibility gains. The findings suggested that the more trainees converged their vowel duration and formants to their trainers, the more their performance improved. At featural level, the study examined the relationship between the preexisting phonetic distance between the Arabic L2 learners of English and model talkers before the exposure and the degree of convergence. Results indicated that there was a direct relationship between how far Arabic L2 learners were from the native model talkers and the degree of convergence in all measured acoustic features. That is, the greater the baseline distance, the greater the degree of phonetic convergence was. However, such a relationship might be due to the metric used to assess phonetic convergence. The relationship between phonetic convergence measured by difference in distance (DID) and the absolute baseline distance is always biased due to the way they are calculated (Cohen Priva & Sanker, 2019; MacLeod, 2021). This study found shadowing to be an effective technique to promote segmental intelligibility among Arabic-speakers learning English as an L2. However, this effectiveness might be increased by trainees converging more to their trainers in vowel duration and vowel spectra or being similar to their trainers in this regard from the beginning

Reading as a social interactive process: The impact of shadow-reading in L2 classrooms

Unlike research in reading which focuses on data from individuals reading independently, this study identified second language (L2) college students’ reading processes that occurred within dyadic peer interactions during shadow-reading, a collaborative procedure based on repetition and summarizing. Also, written retellings (immediate and delayed) were collected to assess the impact of shadow-reading on comprehension and retention. The qualitative analysis of the data was based on the collaborative talk that occurred as partners either attempted to resolve language-related problems in the text or discussed idea-related situations. This analysis revealed comprehension-enabling and comprehension-building processes. The quantitative analysis was based on a numerical assessment of the retellings of the shadow-reading participants and of another group, who read the text individually, without shadow-reading. The shadow-reading group performed significantly better in both conditions, immediate (p < .037) and delayed (p < .004). The pedagogical implications of the use of shadowing in L2 classrooms are discussed