The phonological development of adult Japanese learners of English : a longitudinal study of perception and production.

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Models and Targets for the Pronunciation of English in Vietnam and Sweden

This paper aims to account for the factors that lie behind the choice of models and targets for the pronunciation of English by learners of English in Vietnam and in Sweden. English is the first foreign language in both Vietnam and in Sweden. English is used as a language of international communication in both settings. Swedish learners have much more exposure to spoken English than do Vietnamese learners and the Swedish language is more similar to English than is Vietnamese. These reasons, among others, explain why Swedish accents of English are typically considerably more intelligible than Vietnamese accents of English. Given that the majority of English speakers in the world are not native speakers, it is argued that the traditional learner target of approaching native speaker pronunciations is not appropriate for either group, but especially not for the Vietnamese learners. Instead maximal international intelligibility is a more useful target. To this end, learners need to be exposed to a variety of native and non-native models

“Appropriateness” in foreign language acquisition and use: some theoretical, methodological and ethical considerations

In this contribution, I focus on the concept of “appropriateness” in the usage, the learning and the teaching of foreign languages. Using a participant-based emic perspective, I investigate multilinguals’ perceptions of appropriateness in their foreign languages. Referring to the existing literature, and using previously unpublished material collected through a web questionnaire (Dewaele and Pavlenko 2001–2003), I will show that multilinguals develop their judgements of appropriateness, a crucial aspect of sociopragmatic and sociocultural competence, as part of their socialisation in a new language/culture. However, their ability to judge appropriateness accurately does not imply that they will always act “appropriately”. Indeed, the presence of conflicting norms in their other languages may contribute to conscious or unconscious divergence from the “appropriate” norm in a particular language. Some implications for foreign language teaching will be considered

EFFECTS OF SPEAKER\u27S ACCENT IN A MULTIMEDIA TUTORIAL ON NON-NATIVE STUDENTS\u27 LEARNING AND ATTITUDES

Research in the field of multimedia has yielded principles for the design of effective multimedia instructional messages including Mayer\u27s principles regarding voice. According to the voice principle, students learn more deeply when the narration in a multimedia lesson is spoken by a native voice rather than a non-native voice. The generalizability of the voice principle has been demonstrated when applied to multimedia users who are native speakers of the language used in narration. However, three out of four English users are non-native speakers of English, and the vast majority of verbal exchanges in English do not involve any native speakers of the language at all. By focusing on non-native users, the results of this study should clarify the applicability of the voice principle to a broader target audience. The study investigated whether the accent of the narrator in a multimedia tutorial affected participants\u27 learning and attitudes toward the narrator. The independent variable of the study was narrator\u27s accent with two levels: native accent and non-native shared accent. The dependent variables of the study were participants\u27 learning and their attitudes toward the narrators. Sixty-five Chinese participants at a Midwestern university in the United States were randomly assigned to one of two groups in this experimental design. Data to test the dependent variables were collected through a learning achievement test and an attitude survey. Data analyses revealed that there was no significant difference in overall learning and recall level learning between the two accent groups. However, the group who heard the narration spoken with the native American English accent had significantly more positive attitudes toward their respective narrator than the group who heard the narration spoken with a non-native shared Chinese accent. The study qualifies the voice principle by establishing the limits of its generalizability to non-native English speakers. The study suggests to instructional designers that the use of a non-native shared accent should not affect students\u27 learning negatively although it may affect their attitudes toward the speakers. In addition, the study helps assure non-native instructors that they can record their own voices to use in multimedia instruction as their non-native students will learn as effectively as with a native English accent

Developing, Analyzing and Sharing Multivariate Datasets: Individual Differences in L2 Learning Revisited

Following the trends established in psychology and emerging in L2 research, we explain our support for an Open Science approach in this paper (i.e., developing, analyzing and sharing datasets) as a way to answer controversial and complex questions in applied linguistics. We illustrate this with a focus on a frequently debated question, what underlies individual differences in the dynamic system of post-pubertal L2 speech learning? We provide a detailed description of our dataset which consists of spontaneous speech samples, elicited from 110 late L2 speakers in the UK with diverse linguistic, experiential and sociopsychological backgrounds, rated by ten L1 English listeners for comprehensibility and nativelikeness. We explain how we examined the source of individual differences by linking different levels of L2 speech performance to a range of learner-extrinsic and intrinsic variables related to first language backgrounds, age, experience, motivation, awareness, and attitudes using a series of factor and Bayesian mixed-effects ordinal regression analyses. We conclude with a range of suggestions for the fields of applied linguistics and SLA, including the use of Bayesian methods in analyzing multivariate, multifactorial data of this kind, and advocating for publicly available datasets. In keeping with recommendations for increasing openness of the field, we invite readers to rethink and redo our analyses and interpretations from multiple angles by making our dataset and coding publicly available as part of our 40th anniversary ARAL article

Towards intelligibility: Designing short pronunciation courses for advanced field experts

International audienceEnglish teachers are frequently asked to help colleagues prepare presentations for international conferences. Sometimes this assistance takes the form of a language course or tutorials focusing on the spoken language. Contact time is short but the participants are highly motivated; therefore, which features of the spoken language should the teacher focus on? What type of pronunciation work will provide the greatest payoff in terms of successfully being understood when speaking English to an international audience? Given the current debate on norms, varieties and intelligibility - spurred on by the work of Jenkins (2000, 2002, 2007) and other proponents of English as a Lingua Franca - how can teachers ground their course design in research? This paper addresses a variety of issues concerning the design of pronunciation courses which focus on maximum intelligibility for both native and non-native speakers. Reference is made to an exploratory study of a particular course for researchers in applied linguistics, in order to illustrate some of the issues. Directions for further research are described

A World Englishes Study of Korean University Students: Effects of Pedagogy on Language Attitudes

I examine the impact of raising awareness of World English varieties on the language attitudes of Korean university students. This study triangulated direct attitudinal measurements through the use of a 6-point Likert scale survey with indirect attitudinal measurements by employing a verbal guise test. The verbal guise test used recordings of representative speakers from six varieties of English: American, Chinese, Japanese, British, Saudi, and Korean English. Attitudinal measurements were taken pre and post a series of four 1½-hour practical English classes designed to raise awareness of world varieties, along with global trends in language use that highlight the importance of English as a lingua franca. A two tailed t test for a repeated measures design was performed to determine which changes in pre and post measurements were statistically significant, along with using r2 to determine the effect size of the measurements. Statistically significant positive changes in attitude were detected towards the Chinese, Japanese, British, and Korean speakers. Attitudinal change for the Saudi speaker was not statistically significant. A statistically significant negative change of attitude was detected toward the American speaker. Both the Saudi and American varieties were coincidently omitted from the awareness raising classes. Changes in two responses of the survey were statistically significant. Participants agreed more that they will use English to communicate with non-native speakers, and agreed less with feeling nervous to communicate with native speakers. This study has important pedagogical implications since it indicates that awareness raising classroom activities can positively affect students’ attitudes towards World Englishes

Relative Salience of Speech Rhythm and Speech Rate on Perceived Foreign Accent in a Second Language

We investigated the independent contribution of speech rate and speech rhythm to perceived foreign accent. To address this issue we used a resynthesis technique that allows neutralizing segmental and tonal idiosyncrasies between identical sentences produced by French learners of English at different proficiency levels and maintaining the idiosyncrasies pertaining to prosodic timing patterns. We created stimuli that (1) preserved the idiosyncrasies in speech rhythm while controlling for the differences in speech rate between the utterances; (2) preserved the idiosyncrasies in speech rate while controlling for the differences in speech rhythm between the utterances; and (3) preserved the idiosyncrasies both in speech rate and speech rhythm. All the stimuli were created in intoned (with imposed intonational contour) and flat (with monotonized, constant F0) conditions. The original and the resynthesized sentences were rated by native speakers of English for degree of foreign accent. We found that both speech rate and speech rhythm influence the degree of perceived foreign accent, but the effect of speech rhythm is larger than that of speech rate. We also found that intonation enhances the perception of fine differences in rhythmic patterns but reduces the perceptual salience of fine differences in speech rate

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ACOUSTIC FEATURES OF SECOND LANGUAGE SPEECH AND LISTENER EVALUATION OF SPEECH QUALITY

Second language (L2) speech is typically less fluent than native speech, and differs from it phonetically. While the speech of some L2 English speakers seems to be easily understood by native listeners despite the presence of a foreign accent, other L2 speech seems to be more demanding, such that listeners must expend considerable effort in order to understand it. One reason for this increased difficulty may simply be the speaker’s pronunciation accuracy or phonetic intelligibility. If a L2 speaker’s pronunciations of English sounds differ sufficiently from the sounds that native listeners expect, these differences may force native listeners to work much harder to understand the divergent speech patterns. However, L2 speakers also tend to differ from native ones in terms of fluency – the degree to which a speaker is able to produce appropriately structured phrases without unnecessary pauses, self-corrections or restarts. Previous studies have shown that measures of fluency are strongly predictive of listeners’ subjective ratings of the acceptability of L2 speech: Less fluent speech is consistently considered less acceptable (Ginther, Dimova, & Yang, 2010). However, since less fluent speakers tend also to have less accurate pronunciations, it is unclear whether or how these factors might interact to influence the amount of effort listeners exert to understand L2 speech, nor is it clear how listening effort might relate to perceived quality or acceptability of speech. In this dissertation, two experiments were designed to investigate these questions