Comprehensibility improvements in integrated pronunciation instruction

Abstract

Abstract Integration of pronunciation into content courses is appealing because of its potential in helping learners apply their developing pronunciation skills in spontaneous speech. However, the effectiveness of pronunciation instruction (PI) when it is integrated still needs to be demonstrated. This study evaluates whether a group receiving integrated PI (targeting suprasegmentals) improved in controlled and spontaneous speech tasks, compared to a group who did not receive any specific PI. We measured improvements as comprehensibility ratings and proportion of perceived word stress and vowel reduction errors. The results show that integration appears to be beneficial overall, including in spontaneous speech tasks when comprehensibility is measured. We interpret these findings considering the different tasks used and examine the contribution of the specific instructional approach (form-focused with communicative contextualization) to the observed changes between pre- and post-test.