2014 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
What aspects of prosody and non-verbal language can be learned autonomously?
| Project/Area Number |
26580103
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| Research Institution | Hokkaido University |
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Principal Investigator |
河合 剛 北海道大学, メディア・コミュニケーション研究院, 准教授 (70312981)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
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| Keywords | singing / prosody / non-verbal language / blended learning / flip learning / autonomous learning |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
Within the context of non-native language learning, we desire our students to control pitch (the height of the voice), sound duration (the length of speech sounds and pauses), eye contact, body posture, and the gestures of fingers, hands, and arms.
In project year 1 (academic year 2014) we taught students to sing aloud in the English language. A team of 11 teachers (3 faculty-level instructors and 8 graduate students working as teaching assistants) taught a total of 117 students (spread over 3 classrooms) to sing every Wednesday from 2014-10-01 until 2014-01-07. Each week 1 new song was introduced, played 3 to 4 times, and sung 3 to 4 times. Multiple songs were sung on 2014-12-24 in celebration for Christmas.
Seeking to balance spoken and written production of language, we leveraged an existing autonomous learning system for technical writing.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
We surpassed our project proposal's target with regards to developing the teaching plan. This is largely because of my co-teacher Naomi Suzaki. She designed a method to teach pronunciation via singing (her research was presented at AAAL and TESOL). During project year 1, she chose songs, and based on those songs developed and revised instructional material. She balances pronunciation skills such that sometimes the segmentals and prosody are challenging and sometimes not.
We chose singing because (1) we can simultaneously observe multiple students performing the same prosodic and NVL tasks, (2) our students love music and singing (in a midterm write-in survey, 21 out of 94 students who responded said they enjoyed the singing activity the most), and (3) singing improves pronunciation (http://beingmultilingual.blogspot.com/2013/05/rhythm-clues-and-glues.html).
We are behind our project proposal's target with regards to developing an autonomous learning system. This is solely because the funding amount awarded to our project was reduced by 48 percent. We cannot achieve all of what we promised with half the money.
We question the wisdom of announcing the maximum possible funding amount to be X yen whereas in reality the full amount is never awarded. Planning for projects would become more accurate if applicants were awarded the full amount requested. Reducing funds merely gives a blanket excuse to deliver reduced results.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
In project years 2 and 3 (academic years 2015 and 2016), we will continue to share our teaching method with the language pedagogy community.
We will expand our teaching methods to flip learning as far as practicable. Unfortunately the funding amounts are small for the remainder of the project. We are unsure as to the extent we can proceed in that regard.
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| Causes of Carryover |
The unspent amount of 36 yen could have been spent on travel had travel occurred towards the end of the academic year.
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| Expenditure Plan for Carryover Budget |
We will use the unspent amount of 36 yen in combination with funds for project year 2.
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