Why Should We Teach Pronunciation to Beginners?
Target-like pronunciation skills are nearly impossible for late L2 learners to acquire, even among highly proficient L2 speakers. Yet acquiring a basic level of pronunciation ability is necessary for learners to communicate effectively and avoid comprehension problems, misun-derstandings, and communication breakdowns (Hinofotis and Bailey, 1980; Hirschfeld, 1994;
James, 1976). Adult L2 learners are often aware of this strong connection between pronuncia-tion and effective communication, but research suggests that they may not be able to repair pronunciation problems on their own. Even after many years of exposure to the target language either in the classroom or an immersion environment, many L2 learners’ pronunciation of certain segments or prosodic features remains steady (Counsel man, 2010; Derwing & Munro,592013; Ducate & Lomicka, 2009; Elliott, 1995, 1997; Grosser, 1997; Jilka, 1999; Munro &
Derwing, 2008; Trofimovich & Baker, 2006). L2 learners often fail to identify aspects of theirown pronunciation that affect their ability to communicate and are unable to recognize theirown inaccurate productions, whether the patterns or segments are the same in, or very different between, their two languages (Derwing & Rossier, 2002; Dlaska & Krekeler, 2008; Grosser,1997). Thus, as L2 learners typically cannot acquire target-like pronunciation on their own, it seems necessary to train them in this skill.
A variety of L2 pronunciation training studies have demonstrated that improving pronunci-ation is an attainable goal for late L2 learners when they receive training. The goals behind pronunciation training studies vary; some studies aim to improve pronunciation through accent reduction and an increase in phonetic accuracy (e.g., Botero, 2011; Counsel man, 2010;Elliott, 1995, 1997; Flege, 1989; Harison, 2004; James, 1976; Lord, 2005, 2008Neufeld,1977; Saito & Lyster, 2012), but more recently, emphasis has shifted towards what Levis (2005names the “intelligibility principle”—we need to make sure our L2 students can be understood.
Goals of training programs with the intelligibility principle in mind aim to help L2 learners communicate successfully by making their speech more understandable (Levis, 2005; p. 370).
Improvement is typically assessed through ratings of comprehensibility, defined as “a listener’s perception of how difficult it is to understand an utterance” (Derwing & Munro, 2005, p. 385),and transcription tests that measure intelligibility, or “the extent to which a listener actually understands an utterance” (Derwing & Munro, 2005, p. 385). These goals seem to be more reasonable to expect of L2 learners and more beneficial for communication, and pronunciation training can help learners achieve these goals (Akahane-Yamada, Tohkura, Bradlow, & Pisoni,1996; Derwing, Munro & Wiebe, 1998; Saito & Lyster, 2012; Tanner & Landon, 2009;Thomson, 2011).
The majority of this research has been undertaken in more advanced conversation or
phonetics courses (e.g., Counselman, 2010; Derwing, Munro & Wiebe, 1998; Elliott, 1995,1997; Lord, 2008); experimental studies measuring the effects of training in basic four-skills classrooms are rare. Yet there are numerous potential benefits that scholars have put forward to support the recommendation that training should begin earlier rather than later (e.g., Counsel-man, 2010; Elliott, 1995; Eskenazi, 1999; Gass, Svetics and Lemelin, 2003; Hardison, 2004;Maldonado, 1994; Munro, 2013; O’Brien, 2004). One common suggestion is that training for beginners can help prevent fossilization, the phenomenon in which L2 learners continue us ingin accurate linguistic features in their interl anguage performance, even when these features do
not correspond with the desired or necessary ones in the target language (Selinker, 1972;p. 215).
Phonological fossilization occurs when pronunciation errors are not addressed as they first arise and become ingrained over time through learners’ extended exposure to their own errors and those of their peers (Elliott, 1995). In part because of fossilization, it may be more difficult to reverse pronunciation problems once a certain level of proficiency has been reached
(Elliott, 1995; Hammerly, 1982; Maldonado, 1994; Munro, 2013; Storch, 1994). For example,a training study targeting Spanish /e/ and /o/ by Counsel man (2010) found that adjusting pronunciation of recently learned words may be easier than that of words learned early on in L2instruction. These arguments make it seem advantageous to begin training in the first semes-ters, rather than having to reverse years of fossilization and incorrect habits at more advanced proficiency levels.
Research has shown that beginning learners may be able to use training in pronunciation to develop other aspects of their L2 as well. Students who receive pronunciation training may bemore likely to extend their knowledge and improve their accuracy of sounds that were not specifically trained (Hardison, 2004; Ramírez-Verdugo, 2006). Additionally, Eskenazi (1999)argues that prosodic instruction in the first year of language study could even facilitate the60 UP 48.1 (Spring 2015)acquisition of syntactic structures. She argues that speakers preparing an utterance must simul-taneously organize segments, prosody, and syntax and correct any deviations that do not fit within trained prosodic forms, thereby reinforcing to students which word order or segments are correct.
In sum, pronunciation is a vital component of communicative competence for L2 learners that often needs to be specifically trained for improvement to occur. Such assistance is often not provided to beginner learners, despite the fact that it may be more beneficial to begin training in pronunciation as early as possible. Training beginners can help prevent phonological fossiliza-tion, make reversing pronunciation problem areas easier, and even help them to acquire other aspects of language, such as syntax. The following study addresses this issue by investigating the effectiveness of a pronunciation training unit for beginning German learners that is imple-mented in a first-semester language classroom. Training occurred in just ten minutes per day soas to avoid taking too much time away from practicing other language skills. Three focal pointsof German pronunciation that are characterized as difficult for English native speakers to ac-quire—lexical stress patterns, the allophones of /r/, and the voiceless fricatives [ç] and [x]—were
chosen for training in the hopes of improving students’ comprehensibility in German.
Focus of the Current Study
This section describes a modular classroom pronunciation training unit that was developed to address problem areas critical for beginning learners with the goal of aiding communication through improved comprehensibility. The unit combines successful pronunciation training methods employed in previous studies with peer feedback to provide a treatment appropriate for beginning English-German learners in a four-skills classroom environment. While it is based on previously used training methods, it also differs from previous research in significant ways.
Participants in previous studies have predominantly been learners at the intermediate level of language study, while this study is aimed at learners at the beginner level. The planned unit also will be incorporated into a regular four-skills language course, not a specialized pronunciation or phonetics course. Thus, this pronunciation training unit helps to address a current gap in the literature and attempts to discover whether earlier really is better for students in terms of pro-nunciation training.
The main research question of this study is as follows:
Can a pronunciation training unit for beginning L2 learners in their first semester be effective insignificantly improving pronunciation when compared to a control group that does not receive training?
It is expected that this pronunciation training unit will help beginner learners become moreaware of their pronunciation problems in German and therefore lead to measurable improve-ment in pronunciation. This hypothesis is supported by the numerous suggestions in the litera-ture that focused training of pronunciation may be more beneficial early on in a language learning sequence (Counselman, 2010; Elliott, 1995; Eskenazi, 1999; Gass, Svetics andLemelin, 2003; Hardison, 2004; Maldonado, 1994; Munro, 2013; O’Brien, 2004). If L2 learn-ers in their first semester of study demonstrate improvement as a result of pronunciation train-ing, it will support these suggestions and provide strength to the argument that pronunciation training may be most beneficial to learners just beginning their study of the language, in con-trast to advanced learners.
ROCCAMO: TEACHING PRONUNCIATION 61
Questions
Just a summary of the
article answering the following questions. What topic was researched?
Which research questions were posed? Is it related to practical teaching? If not, what area of DaF does it probe? How was the study conducted?
What prior research was expanded (literature/research review) For which proficiency level is this study relevant?
What were the findings? What practical application might this have on someone’s teaching DaF (Deutsch als Fremdsprache(=German as a foreign language))?
