Presentation

The Effect of Metacognitive Feedback on Second Language Morphophonology

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Abstract

This paper reports on a study investigating an instructional approach designed to convert learners' explicit to implicit pronunciation knowledge, thereby increasing intelligibility and decreasing negative social evaluation. The study explored the effect of metacognitive feedback on oral production of inflectional morphology of students in two Intensive English Program pronunciation elective classes. According to Jiang (2007), "Inflectional bound morphemes of English, such as third person singular -s, plurals, and past tense, are notoriously difficult for adult learners of English as a second language (ESL)" (p. 603). They were chosen for investigation for their social and intelligibility impact. The premise of the study is that explicit instruction is necessary but not sufficient to develop accuracy and automaticity. Both groups' pre-intervention data revealed explicit rule-knowledge but inconsistent, missing, or mispronounced inflections in cloze tests, read-aloud tasks, or spontaneous speech samples. The treatment group received feedback delivered in one transactional move requiring learners to supply and accurately pronounce target morphemes during controlled and spontaneous speech production. Findingsarediscussedintermsoftheminimalelementsrequiredinan instructional approach that would promote bridging the gap between learners' explicit knowledge of a rule-governed feature of English morphology and their accurate production in spontaneous speech.

How to Cite:

Reed, M., (2011) “The Effect of Metacognitive Feedback on Second Language Morphophonology”, Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Proceedings 3(1).