Evidence-Based Design Principles for Spanish Pronunciation Teaching

Laura Colantoni,Paola Escudero,Jeffrey Steele,Victoria Marrero-Aguiar

doi:10.3389/fcomm.2021.639889

Abstract

In spite of the considerable body of pedagogical and experimental research providing clear insights into best practices for pronunciation instruction, there exists relatively little implementation of such practices in pedagogical materials including textbooks. This is particularly true for target languages other than English. With the goal of assisting instructors wishing to build effective evidence-based instructional practices, we outline a set of key principles relevant to pronunciation teaching in general, illustrated here via Spanish in particular, drawing on previous pedagogical research as well as methods and findings from experimental (applied) linguistics. With the overall goal of enabling learners to move toward greater intelligibility, these principles include the importance of perceptual training from the onset of learning, a strong prosodic component, the use of contextualized activities, and a focus on segmental and prosodic phenomena with a high functional load as well as those that are shared across target language varieties. These principles are then illustrated with innovative perception and production exercises for beginner, university-level learners of Spanish. We conclude with a discussion of ways in which the pedagogical principles exposed here can be extended beyond the production of individual activities to the design of a broader pronunciation curriculum.

Highlights

With a few exceptions (e.g., Gilbert, 2005; certain recent methods, see Profile of Widely Used Textbooks in Europe section), L2 pronunciation textbooks typically mirror traditional introductory phonetics textbooks, adopting a structure-based organization
Following the call in Derwing and Munro (2015)3, drawing on both pedagogical research (e.g., Derwing and Munro, 2015; Sicola and Darcy, 2015; Levis, 2018; Rao, 2019) as well as the findings of experimental linguistics, we propose a set of five evidence-based principles applicable to the teaching of any language that are capable of enabling learners to move toward greater intelligibility; some of these are well established, others are new
Given the overarching focus on intelligibility, the fourth and fifth evidence-based principles espoused are that greater time-on-task should be given to features that have a higher functional load (e.g., Brown, 1988; Munro and Derwing, 2006; Dupoux et al, 2008; Derwing and Munro, 2014), and that a primary focus should be placed on segmental and consonantal features shared by the varieties of the target language

Summary

Introduction

With a few exceptions (e.g., Gilbert, 2005; certain recent methods, see Profile of Widely Used Textbooks in Europe section), L2 pronunciation textbooks typically mirror traditional introductory phonetics textbooks, adopting a structure-based organization (consonants and vowels followed by prosody). When working toward an evidence-based curriculum which seeks to train teachers and learners alike, we need to turn to the existing textbooks, as well as to recent literature on Spanish phonetics, phonology, and pronunciation teaching, in order to determine which practices are established and which of these are consonant with the principles espoused here.

Results

Conclusion