A study on the relationship between musical ability and EFL pronunciation proficiency

Mariola Kaszycka

doi:10.31743/lingbaw.13453

Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between musical ability and pronunciation proficiency of English as a foreign language [EFL] of university students of English philology. English pronunciation of the participants is evaluated by academic teachers of English in three categories: the general impression of the foreign or native accent, the accuracy of production of English sounds and the use of word stress and intonation. This experiment was conducted entirely online. Participants’ musical ability was tested using Gordon’s Advanced Measure of Music Audiation [AMMA]. The results of this study demonstrate a moderately positive correlation between musicality and FL pronunciation proficiency. The more musical students, the higher marks from the judges. The present findings seem to be consistent with other studies which suggest that musical skills may positively affect the acquisition of foreign language pronunciation.

Highlights

Foreign learners of English have numerous pronunciation difficulties which often make them unintelligible to native English speakers and cause serious communication problems (SzpyraKozłowska 2012)
The results show to what extent musicality may influence FL pronunciation proficiency and which areas of pronunciation are the most correlated with musicality
The results showed that participants with high musical aptitude outperformed those of low musicality in such tasks as speech and accent imitation, word stress or intonation

Summary

Introduction

Foreign learners of English have numerous pronunciation difficulties which often make them unintelligible to native English speakers and cause serious communication problems (SzpyraKozłowska 2012). A considerable number of studies tend to suggest that foreign learners of English, including Polish ones, tend to make different kinds of pronunciation errors. The main source of these errors is a negative transfer from first language [L1] to the second language [L2] due to the differences between L1 and L2 sounds systems. As explained by Balas (2018: 16), “non-native speech sounds are incorrectly interpreted, because they pass through the filter of native phonology” which means that, without specific knowledge, an L2 learner does not distinguish some similar L2 and L1 sounds and categorises them as identical instead. EFL proficiency is affected by several factors, such as the age of the onset of L2 learning, personality, learning strategies, memory, prior experience, the similarity of the phonemic

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