Teaching pronunciation to learners of Spanish as a foreign language improved intelligibility and comprehension in listening tasks, reports Elizabeth Kissling from the University of Richmond in Virginia.
The Speech Learning Model makes clear that accurate perception of sounds by the listener is needed in order to accurately produce those sounds. The reverse is less intuitive, but has become an increasing area of interest.
A few studies have shown listening improves after pronunciation instruction. They have, however, tended to target learners at intermediate to advanced level, and to devote an unrealistic amount of time to pronunciation.
So just how useful is this strategy in the everyday classroom?
Kissling’s study recruited 18-21 year-old, undergraduate, English native speakers at a US University These students were learning Spanish as false beginners, having failed the assessment criteria to take a higher-level class.
Five different interventions were studied: business as usual with no extra pronunciation, and two kinds of pronunciation instruction, with either perception practice or production practice.
Two groups were instructed in segmental features, i.e. particularly problematic phonemes, while the other two were instructed in suprasegmental features, such as word stress and rhythm.
For each kind of instruction, two different kinds of practice followed after instruction – production practice (spoken repetition with feedback) or perception (a dictation task). To test a ‘real world’ schedule, pronunciation instruction was limited to four, 20-minute sessions over the year.
The strongest results were seen after suprasegmental instruction followed by perception practice. This improved the overall intelligibility of spoken Spanish, as assessed by improved accuracy in a dictation task.
This form of instruction may reduce the tendency of students to identify ‘phantom words’ which potentially could exist but don’t, for example identifying the nonexistent word ‘quel’ instead of ‘que el’.
The effect on Comprehensibility was less straightforward but appears to be improved by segmental instruction, followed by production practice. Gains in comprehensibility also occurred because you are more likely to have confidence in identifying words if you also understand what is being said.
Teaching pronunciation can be time-consuming. Kissling’s study shows that even short, targeted sessions will repay the investment, not only by improving pronunciation but also essential listening skills.
■ Kissling, E. (2018) ‘Pronunciation Instruction Can Improve L2 Learners’ Bottom-Up Processing for Listening.’ The Modern Language Journal, 102(4): 653–675 DOI: 10.1111/modl.12512
