| 研究実績の概要 |
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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| 現在までの達成度 (区分) |
現在までの達成度 (区分)
2: おおむね順調に進展している
理由
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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