Instructed SLA: Case of CALL

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Instructed SLA Case of CALL Teaching
Pronunciation

• Kazuya Saito

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Research Question Instructed SLA in speech

• How can we use CALL to teach pronunciation?
• 1. What to teach?
• Effective instruction with aid of CALL
• 2. How to measure students improvements?
• Experimental phonetics method

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Background

• L2 speech production has been extensively studied
  in SLA (e.g., Best et al., 2001 Flege 1984,
  1995 Piske et al., 2001)
• Very few have been applied to instruction in
  classroom and its efficacy is still
  controversial (Derwing, and Munro, 2005 Doughty,
  2006)
• As a result pronunciation teaching ends up
• lack of strategies
• largely determined by teachers ideology or
  intuition
• almost ignored (especially in Asian EFL Wei,
  2006)

We need more instructed SLA studies
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Instructed SLA in L2 speech

• Explicit instruction is effective!!
• (Munro, and Derwing, 2006)
• Accurate understanding of a target language
• Explicitly taught cross-linguistic difference
  between L1 and L2

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• Present Study
• What to teach? (Instruction)
• How to measure students improvements
  empirically? (Assessment)

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Present Study

• Speaker
• 20 NJs volunteered to participate
• After 1st interview, equally distributed to
  Experimental Control
• Instructor
• Kazuya Saito (the researcher)

gt EFL settings
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Present Study

• Procedure
• 1. Pre-test (T1)
• 2. 3-week treatment 1st-3rd week
• Experimental gt instruction
• -one hour tutoring once a week
• Control gt study in the library
• 3. Post-test (T2) 5th week

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• Instruction
• What to teach?

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Cross-linguistic analysis (NJ vs NE)

• Production
• Vowels (English 12, Japanese 5)
• Consonants (English 24, Japanese 14)
• 
  
  (Tsujimura, 1996Ohata, 2004)
• Segmentals should be prioritized for NJs
• -Even advanced learners
• 
  (Saito, 2007)

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Cross-linguistic analysis (NJ vs NE)

• Question
• Which segmentals are problematic?
• Vowels a low front vowel / æ /
• Consonants Labio dental fricatives / f, v /
• Interdetal fricatives /
  ?, ð /
• Aprroximants / w, l, ? /

Great insights from 1. Ohata (2004) 2. Lambacher
(1999) 3. Saito (2007)
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• Instruction
• How to teach?

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Instruction

• Problems
• It is hard for NNS teachers to give students
  effective feedback
• (Nuan, 1995)
• We should use Computer-Assisted Language Tool
  (CALL)
• Lambacher Model (1999)
• Acoustic Analysis Pronunciation Teaching

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Instruction

• 1. Visual Input Explanation
• 2. Repetition task
• precise phonetic characteristics / æ, f, v, ?, ð,
  w, l, ? /.
• 3. Discrimination task
• which Japanese sounds they might confuse with
  English sounds
• (e.g., / æ / vs / a /, / f / vs / ? /, / v / vs /
  b /, / ? / vs / s /, / ð / vs / z / Ohata,
  1999).

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Example Lesson

• / æ / vs /a/

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Vowel Structure
teeth
teeth
870Hz
1770Hz
1100Hz
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Target Vowel

• / æ / vs /a/

hat /hæ t / hot /hat/ pat /pæt/ pot
/pat/ lack /læk/ lock /lak/ tap /tæp/
top /tap/ cap /cæp/ cop /c?p/ rag
/ræg/ rug /r?g/ map /mæp/ mop
/map/ man /mæn/ mom /mam/
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Acoustic Analysis /a/ vs /?/
NJs /æ/
NEs /æ/
Frequency (0-5000Hz)
F2
F1
/ f a(æ) k s /
/ f ? k s /
/ æ / F1 700Hz F2 1660Hz
/ a / F1 700Hz F2 1100Hz
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• Assessment
• Pre Post Test (speakers)

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Test

• Speech Samples
• Sentence reading task
• Picture description task (spontaneous)
• (e.g., Derwing, and Munro, 1997 Derwing et al.,
  1997, 1998 Munro, and Derwing, 1995 Munro et
  al., 2006).

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Test

• 1. Sentence reading task
• Target / æ, f, v, ?, ð, w, l, ? /
• 1. When do you think they are going to read
  letters?
• /w?n du y? ???k ðei ?? 'go??? t? ?id 'l?t???/
• 2. I guess a married woman is usually happy with
  her office life.
• /a? g?s ? 'mæ?id 'w?m?n Iz 'yu?u?lI 'hæpI w?ð h??
  '?f?s la?f/
• 3. He has at least nine things to complete on
  campus because of his visa.
• /hi hæz ?t list na?n ???s t? k?m'plit ?n 'kæmp?s
  b?'k?z ?v hIz 'viz?/
• 4. Recently the amount of food is very limited
  and that is bad for workers.
• /'?is?ntlI ð? ?'ma?nt ?v fud Iz 'v??I 'l?m?t?d
  ?nd ðæt Iz bæd f?? w??k??z/

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Test
41 words are loaded out of 50
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Test

• 2. Picture description task

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Data

• 200 speech stimuli
• 4 sentences X 20 subjects X 2 (Post/Pre-test)
  160
• 1 picture X 20 subjects X 2 (Post/Pre-test) 40
• In total 200 speech stimuli
• Randomised gt One CD

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• Assessment
• Rating (listeners)

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Assesement

• Listener
• 1. 4 NEs
• 2. Trained (instructors at Syracuse University)
• 3. Reported Familiarity to NNS speech

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Assessment

• Intelligibile Pronunciation
• L2 speech production should be considered at
  various domains such as Comprehensibility and
  Accentedness
• (Derwing, and Munro, 1997 Munro, and Derwing,
  1995 Munro et al., 2006)

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Definition

• Accentedness how native-like?
• Rating(1 native-like -- 9 heavily accented)
• Comprehensibility how easy to follow?
• Rating(1 no efforts to understand -- 9very hard
  to
• 
  
  understand)
• (Munro Derwing, 2006 Derwing Munro, 1997)

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Relationship

• Accentedness does not interfere with
  Comprehensibility
• (Derwing Munro, 1997)

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Present Study

• Rating method
• Accentedness
• (1 native-like 9 heavily accented)
• Comprehensibility
• (1 no-effort to understand 9 very hard to
  understand)
• Use 9-step as much as possible
• Do not include lexico-grammar effects
• Warm-up session (inter-rater reliability)

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• 10 Controlled stimuli
• 2 NEs did the same task
• (4 sentences 1 picture) X 2 NEs 10
• NE listeners have to rate them as perfect!
• Check listeners intra-reliablity

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Examples
Sentence reading
5 7 7
8
Accentedness
2 3 2
3
Comprehensibility
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Examples
Picture description
7 7 5
7
Accentedness
3 1 2
3
Comprehensibility
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• Results

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Results
Inter-raters Reliability ( r )/ n420 per rater
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Results

• All 200 speech stimuli
• T-test
• Statistically Significance (df 39, t 3.68,
  plt.05)
• Experimental Group
• Comprehensibility
• Sentence reading task

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Present Study
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Present Study
Mean of Comprehensibility
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• Discussion

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• Tailored Phonological Syllabus
• (a) Strategy bottom-up
• (b) Targeted phones 8 phones
• (c) Evaluation methods Comprehensibility
  rather than Accentedness
• EFFECTIVE!!!
• Details of effectiveness

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• 2. Why no significance?
• no significance for Picture description
• Maybe..
• (1) Individual learners improve at different
  rates (Mean vector analysis)
• (2) Statistic problems?
• (3) Period of training (5 weeks)?
• (4) Not only 8 segmental phones but also other
  factors such as supra-segmentals?
• (5) More subjects/listeners?

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• 3. Instructed SLA
• Improvement in Experimental group
• gt Attainment of intelligible pronunciations
• Not in Accentedness But in
  Comprehensibility

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Psycholinguistic approach to instructed SLA

• Doughty (2006)
• L2 learners still remain cognitively active
  for language acquisition
• Instruction should be conducted in order to
  help L2 learners toward approaching their
  targeted language in an efficient fashion

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Thank you