The purpose of this study was to determine whether language aptitude and the use of language strategies predict pronunciation gains in second language (L2) acquisition. A second goal was to determine whether these factors differed depending on whether learning occurred in an English as a second language (ESL) or English as a foreign language (EFL) learning context. Eighty-six ESL students in the United States and one hundred EFL students in China were asked to take the Pimsleur language aptitude test. The top 15 or 16 and lowest 15 or 16 scorers on this test from each group were asked to complete a test of pronunciation proficiency and a pronunciation strategies inventory at the beginning and end of a 10-week speaking class in which they were enrolled. The pre and post pronunciation tests were rated and pronunciation proficiency gains in global foreign accent, fluency, comprehensibility and accuracy were compared to both Pimsleur test scores and use of pronunciation strategies before and after training. Results indicated that general language aptitude did not predict pronunciation gains regardless of type of setting (ESL or EFL), but that auditory aptitude may be linked to pronunciation proficiency. Analyses revealed that specific pronunciation strategies were strong predictors of pronunciation gain for comprehensibility and accuracy gains. The findings for this study suggest that pronunciation strategies seem to play a bigger role in pronunciation improvement than language aptitude and are effective in both ESL and EFL settings.

The focus of this project was to develop self-directed pronunciation materials for a specialized group of English as a second language (ESL) learners—missionaries at the Provo Missionary Training Center (MTC) of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A set of six Cued Pronunciation Readings (CPRs) were developed. CPRs are computer-based, self-directed pronunciation materials designed to help students perceive pausing, word stress, and sentence-final intonation in spoken English and practice these features through a sequence of oral reading tasks. The CPRs developed in this project were based on essential missionary communicative tasks and utilized high-frequency gospel vocabulary. These tasks included saying set prayers, reciting relevant scripture passages, and bearing testimonies on gospel principles. These materials, originally developed in Microsoft PowerPoint, were converted for use in an MTC application called Assessment Tools. Following development, the materials were tested with a group of ESL missionaries in the Provo MTC. Fourteen missionaries used the materials during a three-week period. They were encouraged to spend 10–15 minutes each day in the computer lab working on the tasks. At the end of three weeks, a posttest survey was administered to obtain the missionaries' feedback. The missionaries' use of the materials and their reactions are discussed. Suggestions are given for the further development of similar materials and for further implementation of these materials at the MTC.

Recent studies on pronunciation teaching in ESL classrooms have found that the teaching of suprasegmentals, namely stress, pausing, and intonation, has a great effect on improving intelligibility (Derwing, Munro, & Wiebe, 1998; Kang, Rubin, & Pickering, 2010; Morley, 1991). The current project describes the development and implementation of computer-based pronunciation materials used for an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) program. The pronunciation program made use of cued pronunciation readings (CPRs) which used suprasegmentals and were developed for English as a second language (ESL) missionaries at the Provo, Utah, Missionary Training Center (MTC). Because there was no pronunciation program in place at the MTC, instructional materials that focused on prosodic features were greatly needed. Missionaries participated in the program anywhere from three to six weeks. Results from the implementation period revealed that missionaries made medium to large gains in their ability to perceive suprasegmentals after using the practice tasks and small-medium gains in their ability to produce suprasegmentals during this short time period. Recommendations for further development, implementation, and testing of similar materials are made for use with individuals in other ESP settings like these missionaries at the MTC.

Second language (L2) learning has begun recognizing that intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness influence how nonnative speakers of English are perceived by others. As such, pronunciation instruction is becoming more common in L2 curriculum around the world. Corrective Feedback (CF) is commonly given in the pronunciation classroom to draw attention to and correct learners’ errors. Research has tried to understand what forms of CF are most effective for language learning, how CF affects pronunciation, and what learners believe about CF. What is lesser known is if the frequency or rate of CF affects learner’s uptake and pronunciation error repair. Participants in this study were nonnative English speakers who were placed in the high frequency feedback group (HFFG) or the low frequency feedback group (LFFG). After an initial demographic and language beliefs survey, participants experienced a one-on-one pronunciation session with a pronunciation researcher. In the pronunciation session, participants received either high frequency feedback (100% of errors corrected) or low frequency feedback (50% of errors corrected defined as every other error corrected). An immediate follow up survey asked learners about their frequency preference for feedback and their emotional reactions to the feedback. After a nonparametric statistical analysis, results indicated that there were no statistically significant differences between the uptake rates of the HFFG and LFFG. Marginal significance was found in the repair rates between the HFFG and LFFG with the LFFG performing marginally better, but not to a statistically significant level. Frequency of CF may affect learners’ error repair rates. The immediate follow up survey indicated that most participants were inaccurate in their perception of the frequency of CF they received during the lesson. Only two participants changed their preference for frequency of CF after the lesson. These two wanted more feedback and no learner wanted less feedback. Finally, the same survey indicated that learners felt mostly positive emotions when receiving feedback, while only two experienced nervousness/anxiousness. Conclusions are that feedback frequency does not seem to affect learner uptake, but that frequency may affect pronunciation error repair.

The purpose of this research was to replicate previous studies (Foote et al., 2017; Martinsen et al., 2017) investigating the technique of shadowing and its impact on English language learners’ oral fluency and intelligibility. The target population for this study was intermediate-level English language learners as prior shadowing research has focused on advanced learners (Foote et al., 2017) and beginner learners (Lu, 2021). The study involved both a control group (n=10) and a treatment group (n=10), with each group participating in a semester-long class at Brigham Young University’s English Language Center (ELC). Both groups participated in pre and post testing during the second and second to last week of instruction. The experimental group then received 10-weeks of shadowing treatment with transcripts as part of their curriculum of instruction in their listening/speaking class. The control group did not. Speech samples from the pre and post tests were rated for fluency, comprehensibility, accentedness, and the quality of imitative speech with each of the criteria rated by naïve native English speaking raters on a nine-point Likert scale as has been used in other pronunciation studies (Derwing & Munro, 2013). A repeated-measures ANOVA was used to evaluate the results. The data showed that all participants improved significantly from the pre-test to post-test in fluency and comprehensibility, while reducing their accentedness. For the criteria of imitation, the ratings were not significant for the control group and treatment group, although the treatment group showed a trend upward in their improvement. Previous studies investigating shadowing have largely indicated significant improvement in the treatment group’s ability to shadow as well as its influence on changing raters’ perceptions of the speakers’ fluency and comprehensibility. Several of these previous studies, however, did not include control groups, which calls into question the validity of their results if all students can improve in these criteria over the course of a semester, as shown in this study. Qualitative feedback from this study’s participants suggests that overall, students enjoy the technique of shadowing and believe it should be incorporated into an oral communication curriculum.

This study examines how second language (L2) English learners differ in their amount of language anxiety across three communication tasks: a formal academic speaking test, an informal casual interaction with a classmate during an activity in pairs, and a formal interview with an unfamiliar native speaker. It also addressed whether and how their language anxiety across the three tasks affected their accuracy, comprehensibility, and rate of speech. Thirty-seven intermediate-high L2 English learners participated in the three communication tasks. They also completed a general language anxiety questionnaire and three anxiety inventories--one before each task. Results demonstrated that the speaking exam caused more anxiety than the other two tasks. This anxiety had a positive correlation with both accuracy and comprehensibility, but not speech rate. The anxiety caused by the native speaker activity was found to have a correlation with comprehensibility, but nothing else. Finally, the anxiety caused by the pair activity did not have a significant relationship with any variable. It was also found that the participants' speech rate was higher in the native speaker activity than the pair activity, but that there was no significant difference in speech rate, or any other factor, between the exam and the other two activities. The results of the current study suggest that anxiety has a demonstrable effect on the way people speak. Higher anxiety was more likely to produce significant effects on one or more aspects of the participants' speech, including more comprehensible and accurate speech.

The purpose of this study was to examine more deeply the relationship between pause location and duration and its connection to clause and phrase boundaries for native English speakers (NESs). Previous research has shown pauses produced by NESs to be located at clause boundaries (Brown & Miron, 1971; Hawkins, 1971; Tavakoli, 2011), but little empirical work has been done to probe this issue further. For this research, 80 speech samples, 40 male and 40 female, were randomly selected from the International Dialects of English Archive (IDEA) representing different regions in the United States. Oral data from the read-aloud portion of the samples were used for this research. The grammatical structures within the speech sample were tagged, and the filled and unfilled pauses were marked for location and duration. The utterances were analyzed for pauses occurring at grammatical boundaries and punctuation marks. The results showed that 91.5% of all pauses in the speech samples were found after clauses, phrases, or punctuation marks, leaving only 8.5% to occur within these structures. The number of pauses per boundary out of the potential pauses at those boundaries was also analyzed. The findings from this study indicate that NESs pause after 94.2% of the available periods, 69.4% of the clauses, 44.7% of the commas, and 5.7% of the phrases. In addition to these findings on pause location, pauses were found to be longest at clause and period boundaries with average pause lengths of 652 ms and 734 ms respectively and shortest at phrase and comma boundaries with average pause lengths of 471 ms and 511 ms respectively. The results also showed that these differences were statistically significant between clauses and phrases as well as periods and commas. Although filled pauses were marked, no meaningful findings can be reported due to there only being a total of 10 filled pauses in all 80 speech samples. Gender differences were also statistically significant when measuring pause duration with the average pause length of males being 659 ms and those of females being 550 ms. In addition to providing new empirical evidence describing NESs' use of pausing, these findings have potential implications to help non-native English speakers (NNESs) improve their use of pausing in English as a means of enhancing their fluency and intelligibility.

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The purpose of this study was to determine whether language aptitude and the use of language strategies predict pronunciation gains in second language (L2) acquisition. A second goal was to determine whether these factors differed depending on whether learning occurred in an English as a second language (ESL) or English as a foreign language (EFL) learning context. Eighty-six ESL students in the United States and one hundred EFL students in China were asked to take the Pimsleur language aptitude test. The top 15 or 16 and lowest 15 or 16 scorers on this test from each group were asked to complete a test of pronunciation proficiency and a pronunciation strategies inventory at the beginning and end of a 10-week speaking class in which they were enrolled. The pre and post pronunciation tests were rated and pronunciation proficiency gains in global foreign accent, fluency, comprehensibility and accuracy were compared to both Pimsleur test scores and use of pronunciation strategies before and after training. Results indicated that general language aptitude did not predict pronunciation gains regardless of type of setting (ESL or EFL), but that auditory aptitude may be linked to pronunciation proficiency. Analyses revealed that specific pronunciation strategies were strong predictors of pronunciation gain for comprehensibility and accuracy gains. The findings for this study suggest that pronunciation strategies seem to play a bigger role in pronunciation improvement than language aptitude and are effective in both ESL and EFL settings.

Thesis (MScEng (Electrical and Electronic Engineering))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis investigates various data-driven techniques by which pronunciation dictionaries can be automatically augmented. First, well-established grapheme-to-phoneme (G2P) conversion techniques are evaluated for Standard South African English (SSAE), British English (RP) and American English (GenAm) by means of four appropriate dictionaries: SAEDICT, BEEP, CMUDICT and PRONLEX. Next, the decision tree algorithm is extended to allow the conversion of pronunciations between different accents by means of phoneme-to-phoneme (P2P) and grapheme-andphoneme- to-phoneme (GP2P) conversion. P2P conversion uses the phonemes of the source accent as input to the decision trees. GP2P conversion further incorporates the graphemes into the decision tree input. Both P2P and GP2P conversion are evaluated using the four dictionaries. It is found that, when the pronunciation is needed for a word not present in the target accent, it is substantially more accurate to modify an existing pronunciation from a different accent, than to derive it from the word’s spelling using G2P conversion. When converting between accents, GP2P conversion provides a significant further increase in performance above P2P. Finally, experiments are performed to determine how large a training dictionary is required in a target accent for G2P, P2P and GP2P conversion. It is found that GP2P conversion requires less training data than P2P and substantially less than G2P conversion. Furthermore, it is found that very little training data is needed for GP2P to perform at almost maximum accuracy. The bulk of the accuracy is achieved within the initial 500 words, and after 3000 words there is almost no further improvement. Some specific approaches to compiling the best training set are also considered. By means of an iterative greedy algorithm an optimal ranking of words to be included in the training set is discovered. Using this set is shown to lead to substantially better GP2P performance for the same training set size in comparison with alternative approaches such as the use of phonetically rich words or random selections. A mere 25 words of training data from this optimal set already achieve an accuracy within 1% of that of the full training dictionary. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis ondersoek verskeie data-gedrewe tegnieke waarmee uitspraakwoordeboeke outomaties aangevul kan word. Eerstens word gevestigde grafeem-na-foneem (G2P) omskakelingstegnieke ge¨evalueer vir Standaard Suid-Afrikaanse Engels (SSAE), Britse Engels (RP) en Amerikaanse Engels (GenAm) deur middel van vier geskikte woordeboeke: SAEDICT, BEEP, CMUDICT en PRONLEX. Voorts word die beslissingsboomalgoritme uitgebrei om die omskakeling van uitsprake tussen verskillende aksente moontlik te maak, deur middel van foneem-na-foneem (P2P) en grafeem-en-foneem-na-foneem (GP2P) omskakeling. P2P omskakeling gebruik die foneme van die bronaksent as inset vir die beslissingsbome. GP2P omskakeling inkorporeer verder die grafeme by die inset. Beide P2P en GP2P omskakeling word evalueer deur middel van die vier woordeboeke. Daar word bevind dat wanneer die uitspraak benodig word vir ’n woord wat nie in die teikenaksent teenwoordig is nie, dit bepaald meer akkuraat is om ’n bestaande uitspraak van ’n ander aksent aan te pas, as om dit af te lei vanuit die woord se spelling met G2P omskakeling. Wanneer daar tussen aksente omgeskakel word, gee GP2P omskakeling ’n verdere beduidende verbetering in akkuraatheid bo P2P. Laastens word eksperimente uitgevoer om die grootte te bepaal van die afrigtingswoordeboek wat benodig word in ’n teikenaksent vir G2P, P2P en GP2P omskakeling. Daar word bevind dat GP2P omskakeling minder afrigtingsdata as P2P en substansieel minder as G2P benodig. Verder word dit bevind dat baie min afrigtingsdata benodig word vir GP2P om teen bykans maksimum akkuraatheid te funksioneer. Die oorwig van die akkuraatheid word binne die eerste 500 woorde bereik, en n´a 3000 woorde is daar amper geen verdere verbetering nie. ’n Aantal spesifieke benaderings word ook oorweeg om die beste afrigtingstel saam te stel. Deur middel van ’n iteratiewe, gulsige algoritme word ’n optimale rangskikking van woorde bepaal vir insluiting by die afrigtingstel. Daar word getoon dat deur hierdie stel te gebruik, substansieel beter GP2P gedrag verkry word vir dieselfde grootte afrigtingstel in vergelyking met alternatiewe benaderings soos die gebruik van foneties-ryke woorde of lukrake seleksies. ’n Skamele 25 woorde uit hierdie optimale stel gee reeds ’n akkuraatheid binne 1% van di´e van die volle afrigtingswoordeboek.