Presentation

Technology-Enhanced L2 Listening: Triangulating Perception, Production, and Metalinguistic Awareness

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Abstract

L2 listening poses challenges to learners and teachers alike. Learner challenges include parsing continuous speech, and identifying speaker intent (Vandergrift & Goh, 2012). Instructor challenges include overcoming what Field (2008) termed the “comprehension approach” whereby listening skills instruction consists of testing the accuracy of learners’comprehension. Learners’ misattribution of their inability to recognize known words in connected speech to the speed of speech may be ameliorated by metalinguistic awareness of co-articulated divergence from citation form, coupled with technology-enhancedpractice. Learners’ resistance to adopting English prosody (Gilbert, 2014), save for imitation for mocking purposes, may be ameliorated by metalinguistic awareness of pragmatic and discourse functions of intonation plus practice of requisite pitch changes. A framework centered on mutual intelligibility and triangulating speech perception, production, and metalinguistic awareness is proposed. Based on research findings supporting the effectiveness of technologies such as high variability input (Thomson, 2012) and speech visualization (Levis & Pickering, 2004), technological tools including English Accent Coach, POSE-test, YouGlish andPraat are recommended to facilitate learner awareness-raising and teaching of segmental, suprasegmental, and connected speechfeatures. We share the potential of technology-enhanced instruction to improve L2 listening skills.

How to Cite:

Reed, M. & Liu, D., (2019) “Technology-Enhanced L2 Listening: Triangulating Perception, Production, and Metalinguistic Awareness”, Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Proceedings 11(1).