Abstract
Pronunciation is an essential aspect in the teaching of the English language, especially those aspects of pronunciation such as stress and vowel quality as they are crucial elements to ensure intelligibility in communication. The general objective of this study is to investigate whether the theoretical-practical instruction on pronunciation has a crucial impact on the vowel quality production of stressed and unstressed syllable in isolated words and in wider contexts, and therefore, in the improvement of intelligibility and of the oral production in general terms, in two groups of Spanish students of English (the control and the experimental group). More particularly, the study addresses the impact of formal instruction in pronunciation based on deduction in terms of rule formation from a cognitive perspective. The results indicate that the specific work implemented with the production of vowel quality in stressed and unstressed syllables have a significant impact on intelligibility.
Highlights
Pronunciation is an integral element of oral communication and it should not be treated as a separate entity
The general objective of this study is to investigate whether the theoretical-practical instruction on pronunciation has a crucial impact on the vowel quality production of stressed and unstressed syllable in isolated words and in wider contexts, and in the improvement of intelligibility and of the oral production in general terms, in two groups of Spanish students of English
With regard to the proposed general objective, data show that: a) the specific instruction on a highly specific element such as the vowel quality in stressed syllable and unstressed syllable improves its production; b) this improvement has an overall effect on the achievement of a more accurate pronunciation and, in particular, on the achievement of intelligibility since the elements are an essential component for the understanding of messages; c) the test has measured what could be labelled as the “microlevel” of pronunciation and the “macrolevel”
Summary
Pronunciation is an integral element of oral communication and it should not be treated as a separate entity. As O’Connor (1980: 2) states, adults must create their sound system of the foreign language (FL) since the linguistic habits of the mother tongue are well established. This supports the idea that the instruction in phonology is necessary so that learners can receive effective training regarding “the education of the ear”, which will make them able to understand the native utterance and to communicate orally with a minimum of intelligibility (Brown, 1992; Morley, 1994; Kenworthy, 1997; Munro & Derwing, 1999; Hancock & Pavón, 2005; Gimson, 2008). The teacher can offer all types of explanation about potential difficulties that occur once a comparison of the phonological systems is carried out
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