Teaching with Technology

Blog 9

Prosody is an important aspect of language production, it encompasses:  word stress, intonation, and pausing.  According to Tanner et al, (2009) in The effects of computer-assisted pronunciation readings on ESL learners’ use of pausing, stress, intonation, and overall comprehensibility, “Empirical research has begun to confirm the importance of prosodic features in learners’ overall intelligibility and perceived comprehensibility” (p. 51). However, there is a lack of teachers trained and qualified to teach these aspects of pronunciation. Computer technologies offer language learners opportunities to study prosody outside the classroom; circumventing the problem of a lack of qualified teachers. The question is: Are these technologies effective?   

The authors studied and reported on “a self-directed, computer-assisted technique that uses oral readings to improve students’ perception and production of pausing, word stress, and sentence-final intonation” (p 53). A key piece of this study was that it was self directed and that, beyond an hour class explaining how to use the computer-based prosody program, teachers were not involved in the instruction. Teachers did not even provide feedback to the participants on their performance.

This 11 week study limited students’ interaction with a prosody computer program to 10 minutes per day. The 75 participants were divided into control and test groups. All were intermediate level students enrolled in a university English as a second language ESL program. They listened to native speakers “oral readings” (p.53) embedded in Power Point slides enabling “participants listen to them as many times as necessary to complete the listening” portion of this instruction (p. 54). Participants were able to check their perception regarding the occurrence of different prosodic features with an answer key. Eventually they recorded their own readings and compared them with the native speaker versions. 

At the beginning and end of the study, the participants read passages that were evaluated by a team of listeners regarding their correct use of word stress, pausing, intonation and listener comprehensibility.  Tanner et al cite Derwing’s & Munro’s definition of comprehensibility as “a ‘listeners’ perception of how difficult it is to understand an utterance’” (p. 52). The results of these evaluations were very interesting. It was determined that over the course of the 11 weeks the test participants made significant gains in the correct use of word stress, pausing and intonation compared with the control group; however, “there was no significant change in the learners’ level of perceived comprehensibility” (p. 61), the ability of the listener to understand what has been said.

The authors speculated that the lack of improvement in comprehensibility could be due to such factors as the lack of teacher feedback, the brief exposure with the program of no more than 10 minutes a day, and the programs limited length of 11 weeks.

Despite the stability of the test participants’ comprehensibility results, computer-assisted pronunciation programs still hold promise. Significant gains were made by learners in the fundamental prosodic areas of word stress, pausing and intonation and learners and the majority of participants “felt they had improved” (p. 59) and that they “could understand English conversations more easily and they had increased their knowledge of English pronunciation”. While these areas were not being studied, improvements in listening and pronunciation knowledge are goals in language teaching. It would be interesting to see if studies that included some teacher feedback or were of greater length, improved comprehensibility. These results also raise the question of whether other non-prosodic factors have a more profound effect on comprehensibility; such as, the correct phonetic pronunciation of different phonemes (language sounds); and if so, are computer-assisted applications addressing these areas having a positive impact on user’s comprehensibility.    

Tanner, M., et al. (October 2009). The effects of computer-assisted pronunciation readings on ESL learners’ use of pausing, stress, intonation, and overall comprehensibility. Language Learning & Technology, (13) 3. p. 51-65. Retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/vol13num3/tannerlandon.pdf