Presentation

Incorporating Pronunciation in the First-Year Spanish Classroom: An Early Intervention

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Abstract

There is currently no consensus about the role of pronunciation instruction in beginning L2 classrooms. Trofimovich and Gatbonton (2006), and Hurtado and Estrada (2010) found that focusing on form and meaning resulted in greater improvement in the pronunciation of intermediate than beginning learners, and Hurtado and Estrada (2010), and Arteaga (2000) suggest that perceptual training could be beneficial for beginners. This study investigates the effects of two types of instruction (Technical and Non- technical) on the perceptual abilities of beginning L2 Spanish learners. The Technical Instruction (TI) group received information on target sounds via formal phonetic explanations. The Non-technical Instruction (NI) group was aurally exposed to the target sounds and made aware of their orthographical contexts without formal phonetic explanations. Both groups completed perception activities with the target sounds. A control group of the same level received neither instruction nor perception activities. Assessments were online and consisted of a pretest, posttest and delayed posttest that measured perceptual accuracy of the target sounds. In general, the results did not reveal a significant improvement for the groups in their perceptual development by the end of the experiment. However, there was a significant effect for instruction at the immediate posttest, in which the NI group outperformed the TI and Control groups. This effect was neutralized in the delayed posttest, which revealed no significant differences between groups. A further analysis by sound revealed gains on the vowels, voiceless stops and the grapheme ‘v’, which provides support for the claims of the Perceptual Assimilation Model-L2 (Best and Tyler, 2007).

How to Cite:

Bailey, A. A. & Brandl, A., (2012) “Incorporating Pronunciation in the First-Year Spanish Classroom: An Early Intervention”, Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Proceedings 4(1).