2004 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Experimental Study on the effect of pronunciation drills by Japanese learners of English
| Project/Area Number |
15520384
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Foreign language education
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| Research Institution | Tsuyama National College of Technology, JAPAN |
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Principal Investigator |
NAGAI Katsumi Tsuyama National College of Technology, Associate Professor, 一般科目, 助教授 (20332059)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2003 – 2004
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| Keywords | Language learning / pronunciation practice / Conjoint analysis |
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| Research Abstract |
Repetition after a teacher (a-repeat) and repetition with a teacher (w-repeat) are the most widely used ways of pronunciation practice in a language classroom. The aim of the present research is to measure the effectiveness of the two types of pronunciation practice through four experiments focusing on the temporal factor. In Experiment 1, Japanese learners of English were asked to imitate English and nonsense syllables, and their reaction time was measured. Average latency before launching repetition fell between 600ms and 900ms, varying with phonological length of the test words. In Experiment 2, pairs of nonsense and English words, which included difficult phonemic distinctions for Japanese learners of English such as between /1-r/ and /v-b/, were both a-repeated and w-repeated. In Experiment 3, pairs of English sentences, which had strong-weak and weak-strong stress patterns, were a-repeated and w-repeated. In both experiments, learners' practices were taped and evaluated by British teachers of English. In Experiment 2, the results of nonsense words revealed that there was no significant difference in naturalness between a-repeat and w-repeat. However, a-repeating surpassed w-repeat in Experiment 3. In Experiment 4, subjects were presented the identical stress patterns of test sentences reproduced with short sinusoid waves. The learners a-repeated and w-repeated the patterns by pronouncing monosyllabic word "ta." The result showed no difference between a-repeating and w-repeat, which implied an advantage of repetition of sentences over that of nonsense words.
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