Presentation

Pronunciation Instruction and Syllabic-Pattern Discrimination

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Abstract

Syllable simplification strategies such as deletion (e.g., ‘bag’’, ‘star’ [___]) and vowel insertion (e.g., ‘bag’ [_____]’, ‘star’ [is____]) are frequent in L2 phonology. In the Brazilian Portuguese-English interphonolology, vowel insertion tends to me more recurrent than deletion. The addition of a vowel modifies the rhythm of the English language, since it creates an extra syllable, which might also result in word-stress alternation. All these changes might hinder intelligibility, and for this reason the syllable is an important curriculum component for pronunciation instruction directed at Brazilian learners of English. The present research is an investigation of the role played by pronunciation instruction in the discrimination of English CVC and CV.CV words. The participants of this study were two groups of Brazilian learners (beginners): the control group (10 students), and the experimental group (12 students). Both groups were given a discrimination pretest and posttest, between which the experimental group received instruction based on a pronunciation manual with activities focused on the English syllable and word-final consonants, whereas the control group received no such instruction. The pre and posttests consisted of an oddity discrimination test, in which the participants had to discriminate between the CVC and CV.CV words. The posttest results showed somewhat greater improvement for the experimental group than for the control group, thus suggesting a positive effect for pronunciation instruction.

How to Cite:

Silveira, R., (2012) “Pronunciation Instruction and Syllabic-Pattern Discrimination”, Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Proceedings 4(1).