Abstract
A troublesome pronunciation issue for Spanish EFL learners is the past -ed ending of regular verbs. Neuro linguistic Programming (NLP) is a perspective integrating neurology, language and programming which are key for processing information and for responding to learners’ styles with the potential to help EFL teachers address this pronunciation issue. This paper reports a study conducted in two subsequent terms with 43 students at a university language institute: two groups taught using standard pronunciation techniques and two using NLP techniques preceded by oral tasks in which they were encouraged to pronounce regular verbs in the past. Data collected included students self-recorded pronunciation tasks, a survey to elicit students’ motivation and satisfaction and a teacher’s log with insights about students’ attitude and response to the strategy. Analysis of the data showed that after the first implementation, the NLP group improved their pronunciation a 30%, the standard one improved a 10%. During the second implementation, the NLP group showed an improvement of 23.7% pronunciation accuracy in task 1 and a 24.6% in task two compared to the standard group. The findings suggest that teacher’s use of NLP techniques into their classroom instruction have a positive impact on students’ pronunciation of the past ending of regular verbs.
Highlights
1.1 The ProblemThis study resulted from an investigation related to the techniques used for the treatment of oral errors in tasks used by native and non-native English-speaking teachers in a Colombian language institution (Caballero, 2012)
All students from two B1 classes participated of regular English classes and received either standard instruction in regular verbs /ed/, past tense pronunciation or Neuro linguistic Programming (NLP) instruction; we only reported data from students who consented to share their data: 12 students in the first implementation: 5 in the standard group or the group that did not use NLP and 7 in the NLP group. 31 students participated in the second implementation: 18 in the standard group and 13 in the NLP group
If we take a look at the percentage of the difference between the two, pronunciation accuracy remained higher in the NLP group
Summary
1.1 The ProblemThis study resulted from an investigation related to the techniques used for the treatment of oral errors in tasks used by native and non-native English-speaking teachers in a Colombian language institution (Caballero, 2012). It was found that teachers’ instructional pronunciation repertoire was not varied failing to reach an ample number of students with diverse learning styles and preferences. This is echoed by many authors in the field (Añorga & Benander, 2015; Buss, 2012; Celce-Murcia, Brinton, & Goodwin, 2010; Morin, 2007; Sifakis & Sougari, 2005; Wei; 2006), who report that English pronunciation has been sidelined in EFL/ESL teacher education programs and in classrooms throughout the world leaving teachers on their own in relation to pedagogically informed pronunciation strategies or techniques to use in the classroom. NLP is very much related to left / right elt.ccsenet.org
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