Foreign Language Phonology: Field Independence, Attitude, and the Success of Formal Instruction in Spanish Pronunciation

Abstract

The issue of teaching pronunciation has been severely neglected after the first year of most university foreign language (FL) courses. Moreover, research examining factors affecting the acquisition of the second language (L2) phonological system has been, in general, very scarce. In the present study I examine the acquisition of a nonnative phonological system by adult language learners studying Spanish at Indiana University, Bloomington. The objective of the study was to determine the success of supplementing intermediate Spanish courses with formal instruction in pronunciation. The instruction provided a multimodal methodology aimed to account specifically for individual differences and learning style variation. Variables such as field independence (FI), as measured by the Group Embedded Figures Test (Witkin, Oltman, Raskin, & Karp, 1971), and subject attitude or concern for pronunciation accuracy were examined in relation to improvement in pronunciation. The findings revealed that neither FI, nor subject concern for pronunciation accuracy, were significant predictors of improvement in pronunciation. In contrast, the multimodal methodology resulted in significant improvement of target language pronunciation for the subjects in the experimental group. The article ends with a classroom model of pronunciation instruction designed to enable teachers to incorporate this multimodal method into most second language (L2) curricula. There are also observations about pronunciation errors as they relate to contrastive analysis theory and several suggestions for future research.