Abstract

This paper examines the creation and running of the Language MOOC (LMOOC) “The Acquisition of English Pronunciation through Songs and Literary Texts” (1st ed.) and its effects on the proficiency rates of English pronunciation of a group of Spanish speakers registered in the Degree in English Studies offered at the Distance Learning University in Spain (UNED). The LMOOC included a new approach to phonetics teaching and learning based on the stress and rhythmic patterns of literary and music forms. It was offered as voluntary, complementary material to the 640 students registered on the second-year compulsory course on English Pronunciation. The results of a final oral exam showed that the students who took the LMOOC did much better in their oral production than those who only worked with the regular course materials. The LMOOC allowed us to investigate a reversed methodology to phonetics teaching, from rhythmic patterns to sounds, which proved to be highly beneficial to the students of higher education programs with a relevant impact on their pronunciation competences and skills. These findings also suggested that using an implicit methodology to phonetics teaching based on poems and songs is a good complement to explicit learning.

Highlights

  • The goal of this paper is three-fold: 1) to explore the benefits of the Language MOOC (LMOOC) “The Acquisition of English Pronunciation through Songs and Literary Texts” as a teaching complement to official regulated subjects, 2) to analyze the effects of the LMOOC on the proficiency rates of English pronunciation performed by a group of Spanish speakers registered on the undergraduate course English Pronunciation and 3) to examine the effects of complementing formal tuition in phonetics with an implicit methodology based on songs and literary texts

  • This paper has examined how an LMOOC can be used as a supplement to traditional higher education courses

  • It has analysed the effects of the first edition of the LMOOC “The Acquisition of English Pronunciation through Songs and Literary Texts” on the production skills of the students registered on the undergraduate course English Pronunciation from the Degree in English Stud­ ies (UNED)

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Summary

Introduction

Language Massive Open Online Courses (LMOOCs) This paper investigates the advantages and disadvantages of using a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) to supplement learning in higher education courses. It examines how a Language MOOC (LMOOC) on English pronunciation can help undergraduate students to improve their proficiency rates in their oral production. MOOCs were conceived as free courses which required no entry qualifications and which were addressed to students of any age, nationality and social background (Jansen & Schuwer 2015) This new system of online tuition reached wide audiences and was soon accepted as a valuable source of opportunities at individual, institutional, and social levels (León-Urrutia et al 2018). Even though one of the initial aims of MOOCs was to open education to a general public, recent research has shown that MOOCs have a great impact on higher education tuition

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