In this thesis, I set out to investigate whether the use of songs can help L2 speakers learn to better perceive and produce suprasegmental phenomena. Effective pronunciation skills are necessary for successful communication and as such can greatly impact one’s personal, social, and professional life. Studying the use of songs for teaching pronunciation is interesting because as a linguistically rich material, songs can enhance learning due to their positive affective, social, and cognitive influence in the L2 classroom. Using songs to teach pronunciation within a Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) framework constitutes a novel approach to an underexplored area of classroom research. In order to learn how using songs might help native Spanish speakers learn English suprasegmentals, I conducted a mixed methods exploratory short-term case study of Chilean university students studying English Language and Literature at the Universidad Católica de Chile. Using three groups: a control, songs, and no-songs group, the pre- to post-course progress was measured first with the two treatment groups combined and then with them separated. In this way we were able to measure the effectiveness of songs compared to other materials as well as to no intervention whatsoever. After two weeks of instruction, we found that using songs can significantly help in the production of the schwa when reading a text and of thought groups when speaking freely. Results obtained in listening tests were not statistically significant. However, closer examination of the performance of individual songs- group participants showed not only a greater than average progress in different suprasegmental areas in both listening and speaking, but also an appreciation of songs as an effective and enjoyable means of learning pronunciation. It would be advantageous for future research to explore the effects of teaching the pronunciation areas using the same methodology but for longer periods of time with delayed post-course testing to determine whether the effects are long-term. In addition, further exploration into the relationship between pronunciation perception and production could provide insight for the development of more effective teaching techniques.

Music education and pronunciation teaching within second language education would seem to be two entirely separate fields. Yet, there are undeniable links between learning to play an instrument, such as the violin, and learning to speak in a second language. This Report attempts to bridge the divide between both disciplines by highlighting the similarities between musical features and pronunciation features, and by applying principles for practicing music to pronunciation practice. It is hoped that this comparison will motivate second language learners to practice pronunciation and increase the quality of their home practice, which has been found to play an important role in determining the degree of students’ pronunciation improvement (Sardegna, 2011). This Report begins with a review of pronunciation teaching trends and how they have shaped pronunciation teaching today. It then provides an overview of three important pronunciation learning models, followed by a discussion of a principled approach to teaching pronunciation. This principled approach may help bridge the gap between theory and classroom practice. Then, grounded on evidence suggesting strong links between teaching pronunciation and teaching violin, the Report concludes with a rationale for applying the proposed principles to a musical teaching context and suggests adopting a musical approach to practice in order to effect change in students’ English pronunciation. / text

This study examined Taiwanese ESL learners' perception and production of English interdental fricatives (IFs) with respect to three variables: perception errors, production errors, and three ranges of length of residence (LOR) in the US (LOR < 1 year; LOR= 3-4 years; LOR ; at least 7 years). Through the investigation, several relationships among perception, production errors, and LOR were revealed. In addition, the types and patterns of the pronunciation errors as well as the phonological processes involved in the mispronunciations were investigated. The instrument included both perception and production tasks, as well as a demographic questionnaire. More specifically, the production task contains two syllable positions: word initial and word final; two sources: word list and text. The data were analyzed through auditory and spectrographic devices with an involvement of an inter-rater agreement. The results showed that there was a positive relationship between perception and production errors for each of the three groups. Namely, the more perception errors made by the Taiwanese ESL learners, the more production errors occurred. The correlation increases with each group, i.e., with LOR. The relationship between LOR and perception and production errors were significantly negative as the longer the learners had stayed in the US, the fewer errors in perception and production were made and vice versa. A descriptive analysis revealed that the initial theta and the final eth are the most difficult sounds for the Taiwanese learners to perceive. In addition, both voiceless and voiced IFs were found to be difficult to pronounce in the final position. Regarding the source where the target sounds were located, the results indicated that reading text (rather than a word list) caused more pronunciation errors for most of the learners except the group with LOR at least 7 years, which had a better performance in the production task compared with the other two groups, regardless of which source the target sounds were located. From the overall findings, ESL teachers are encouraged to apply multiple teaching tools and to provide feedback with effective correction techniques to learners in order to adjust and overcome their pronunciation errors.

This study explores the weight of pronunciation in a speaking proficiency test at an English as a Second Language (ESL) Intensive English Program (IEP) in America. As an integral part of speaking, beliefs, practices, and research of pronunciation teaching have experienced shifts over the decades (Morley, 1991). Most studies concerning speaking have focused on intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness of speaking, with attempting to address the role of pronunciation in oral communication. However, the degree to which pronunciation is weighed in determining speaking proficiency levels is unclear (Higgs & Clifford, 1982, Kang, 2013). In an effort to contribute to the understanding of this issue, the current study investigates the relationship between pronunciation and speaking proficiency ratings. The speaking proficiency ratings and pronunciation ratings in vowels, consonants, word stress, sentence stress, intonation, and rhythm of 226 speaking samples from English learners were collected at Brigham Young University's (BYU) English Language Center (ELC). The study confirms that suprasegmentals explain more variance than segmentals in English proficiency, and among those suprasegmental features, only the ratings of sentence stress increase incrementally with the proficiency levels without overlapping among proficiency levels.

This thesis attempts to bridge the gap between Social Psychology and Sociolinguistics by exploring the relationship between language attitudes and language use. Using a sample of 71 university students in Spain, it investigates how learners deal with phonological variation in the English language, what language attitudes are held towards American and British models of English speech and which social and psychological factors are linked with learners' language attitudes and language use. A social-psychological model was adopted and adapted, allowing learners' use of intervocalic /t/ to be successfully predicted from measures of attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control. Direct measures of learners' preferred accent and pronunciation class were also highly predictive of learners' language use. Several trends were found in the attitudinal data. Firstly, British English speech was rated more favourably overall, though American English speech was often viewed as more socially attractive. Secondly, the evaluative dimensions of competence and social attractiveness were salient amongst learners in the Spanish context. Each of these findings endorses those of previous language attitude studies conducted elsewhere. Thirdly, female speakers were consistently rated more favourably than male speakers; thus, highlighting the need for further investigation into the variable of speaker sex. Familiarity with the speech varieties under investigation – most often gained through education, media exposure, time spent abroad and/or contact with native speakers – seemed to result in learners challenging rigid stereotypes and expressing more individualised attitudes. Overall, British speech emerged as formal and functional, while American speech was thought to fulfil more informal and interpersonal functions. This thesis provides compelling evidence of attitude-behaviour relations, adds to the growing volume of language attitude research being conducted across the globe, and establishes – for the first time – which social and psychological variables are relevant and salient within English-language learning contexts in Spain.

This thesis aims to investigate socio-psychological factors that affect foreign language learners&rsquo / pronunciation and focuses on the relationship between in-class injunctive norms for English pronunciation and Fear of Negative Evaluation (FNE). Injunctive norms are a type of social norms that define the expected behavior from the group members and sanctions for disobedience. They are evaluative in their nature. FNE is one of the three components of foreign language classroom anxiety and experienced when a person is in an evaluative situation. For this study, the quantitative data were collected through a questionnaire developed by the researcher and the qualitative data were gathered from the interviews. Freshman students at the Department of Foreign Language Education at Middle East Technical University participated in the study. v The results indicated that speaking with native like or Turkish-like English pronunciation and having some pronunciation mistakes, which are commonly observed in the classroom, are approved according to in-class injunctive norms for English pronunciation. However, if speakers cannot achieve sounding native like when they are trying to emulate native pronunciation, or if they make pronunciation mistakes which are not commonly observed in the classroom or overemphasized by the instructors, these performances are not approved. Speaking with an English pronunciation in the classroom which is not approved according to these norms triggers FNE in the learners. Therefore, learners generally prefer speaking with Turkish-like English pronunciation, which is within the frame of inclass injunctive norms. The results also demonstrated that the pronunciation rules that teachers emphasize become a part of injunctive norms / therefore, teachers have an important role in the determination of these norms.

A number of studies in the literature claim that storytelling is a powerful tool in the development of receptive (i.e., Reading and Listening) and productive (i.e., Speaking and Writing) language skills, including pronunciation (e.g., Atta-Alla, 2011; Mottalabi & Pourgharib, 2013; Zare-Behatash, Saed and Sajjadi, 2016). Furthermore, there are studies that suggest that storytelling is even more effective than traditional teaching methods (e.g., Hsu, 2010; Li & Seehouse, 2010; Zare-Behatash, Saed and Sajjadi, 2016). The problem, however, is that those studies generally lack specific information about how storytelling improves pronunciation and what aspects are enhanced, for instance. This study aims to fill such a gap in the literature by investigating the effect(s) of storytelling on the development of the pronunciation of Brazilian beginner learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) who are 15 years of age and older, through a focus on specific segmental (i.e., /I/; /i/ and /ð/; /θ/) and suprasegmental (i.e., word stress) features that are considered difficult for Brazilian learners of English to pronounce intelligibly (i.e., Baptista, 2001; Cruz, 2003; Reis, 2006). Additionally, it aims to investigate how storytelling activities compare in effectiveness to textbook activities in the development of pronunciation, since textbook activities are widely used pedagogical tools in English classes in Brazil and generally considered to be effective in the development of language skills (e.g., Consolo, 1990; Xavier & Urio, 2006). Last, the study examines Brazilian learners’ perceptions about the usefulness and relevance of the storytelling/textbook activities they were exposed to in improving their pronunciation. Data were collected at a private school in Brazil three times a week, in 12, 25-minute sessions. A total of 86 learners participated in the study and were randomly divided into three different groups (i.e., experimental, n=28; comparison, n=29; and control, n=29). The experimental group performed storytelling activities and the comparison group performed textbook activities. The control group received no treatment. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted to examine the data gathered from pre-tests, post-tests and questionnaires. The findings of the statistical analyses showed significant differences in the participants’ performance in the perception and production pre-tests/post-tests, suggesting that storytelling and textbook activities played an effective role in the pronunciation improvement of the participants. In addition, findings showed that storytelling and textbook activities had a similar effect on pronunciation. The findings of the quantitative and qualitative questionnaires showed that, in general, participants in the experimental (i.e., storytelling) and comparison (i.e., textbook) groups similarly enjoyed performing their respective activities, although they were not much sure about their usefulness and relevance for the improvement of their English pronunciation. This study offers various contributions in the investigation of the effect of storytelling on pronunciation improvement. In addition to addressing the lack of specific information in previous studies on the relationship between storytelling and pronunciation development, it also contributes to the field by showing teachers that L2 pronunciation development may be impacted by a number of factors at individual, psychological, sociocultural and sociocognitive levels, to mention a few. Moreover, it suggests that the implicit approach examined in the study did not seem to play an effective role in the development of learners’ pronunciation. Instead, an inductive approach that involves exposing learners to target sounds through the use of enhanced input, for instance, could potentially increase the effectiveness of pronunciation improvement through storytelling. / Graduate

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<p dir="ltr">Comprehensibility refers to the degree of effort that a listener requires to understand a speaker’s utterance (Derwing & Munro, 1997; Munro & Derwing, 1995; Derwing & Munro, 2005). Previous studies on L2 pronunciation have found that segmental errors could affect comprehensibility (Derwing et al., 1998; Derwing & Munro, 1997; Isaacs & Thomson, 2020; Saito et al., 2017). However, this finding only indicates a correlation between the number of segmental errors and lower comprehensibility. It is still unclear what aspects of pronunciation L2 learners need to practice in order to improve the comprehensibility of their speech. This thesis proposes that the degree of acoustic contrast may play a role in determining comprehensibility. More specifically, it investigates the relation between Mandarin speakers’ acoustic contrast between tense and lax vowels in English (i.e., [i] and [ɪ], [u] and [ʊ]) and the perceived comprehensibility of their speech.</p><p dir="ltr">A sentence production task and a comprehensibility rating task were conducted. In the sentence production task, 20 Mandarin speakers and 10 English speakers read aloud English sentences containing tense and lax vowels and were audio-recorded. The acoustic measurements of the vowels were taken in order to compare Mandarin speakers’ acoustic realization of the tense and lax vowels with English speakers’ productions. In the comprehensibility rating task, 48 English speakers transcribed the sentences recorded during the sentence production task and rated the comprehensibility of the sentences. The comprehensibility ratings were tested for correlation with the number of transcription errors, the degree of spectral and durational contrasts between vowels, and the speakers’ US residency length, in order to investigate the relation between intelligibility errors and comprehensibility, between acoustic contrast and comprehensibility, and between US residency length and comprehensibility.</p><p dir="ltr">The results of the linear-mixed effect model indicated that spectral contrast between [u] - [ʊ], but not [i] - [ɪ], was significantly reduced in Mandarin speakers’ productions compared to the English speakers, suggesting that Mandarin speakers under-differentiated the back vowel pair. A correlation test using Kendall’s <i>tau</i> indicated a significant negative correlation between number of intelligibility errors and comprehensibility, suggesting that intelligibility errors decreased comprehensibility. A correlation test using Kendall’s <i>tau</i> indicated a significant positive correlation between the degree of spectral contrast and comprehensibility rating for sentences with semantically meaningful context, suggesting that increasing the contrast between tense and lax vowels could help increase the comprehensibility of speech. Finally, a correlation test using Kendall’s <i>tau</i><i> </i>indicated no significant correlation between US residency length and comprehensibility, meaning that the relation between residency length and comprehensibility was not confirmed.</p><p dir="ltr">To sum up, acoustic contrast could be one of the contributors to speech comprehensibility. Therefore, directing English L2 learners to focus on increasing the acoustic distance between contrasting vowels could prove a fruitful strategy for improving the comprehensibility of L2 speech.</p>

This study investigates Swedish upper-secondary teachers’ views and reported practices regarding pronunciation instruction in the English-as-a-foreign-language classroom. It adopts a mixed-method design, analysing qualitative data collected from a focus-group interview (N=4) and quantitative data collected from an online survey (N=54).  To investigate the views and reported practices of teachers, the following research questions were posed:  1. What are the views and attitudes of English teachers in the Swedish upper-secondary school regarding pronunciation and pronunciation instruction?  2. How do English teachers in the Swedish upper-secondary school describe their own practices in pronunciation instruction?  Results indicate that teachers generally value comprehensibility as the most important aim of pronunciation instruction. However, a native-like accent still seems to be highly valued, and nativeness norms still seem to affect teachers’ views and practices to some extent. Finally, our findings indicate that teachers spend very little time on pronunciation teaching in general, and they highlight that other aspects of language instruction are more important.