No abstract

The central purpose of this study is to illustrate how ESL instructors can take a principled approach to setting pronunciation instruction priorities for learners. Elicited speech samples from 30 adult English learners were analysed for suprasegmental and segmental pronunciation features. Guided by Levis’ (2005) intelligibility principle, results of the analysis led to recommended foci for pronunciation instruction. The study’s participants come from three distinct first language (L1) backgrounds (Mandarin Chinese, Colombian Spanish, and Slavic), reflecting the type of linguistic breadth found in typical ESL classrooms. It is recommended that problematic features observed in the speech of participants from all three L1s be addressed as a whole group, with each L1 group also receiving separate instruction for their specific difficulties. Finally, results of the speech analysis are compared with previously published material describing L1-specific pronunciation difficulties.

In many English language teaching contexts, listening activities resemble listening comprehension tests. Scholars have argued that this product-oriented approach is not particularly effective in helping learners improve their listening skills and have advocated for the inclusion of instruction that targets specific features of spoken language. The current study tested these claims in the context of an English-for-academic-purposes (EAP) listening and speaking course. Sixty-four post-secondary learners of English were randomly assigned to one of two groups. In addition to their regularly scheduled listening activities, one group received 100 minutes of instruction for two prosodic features (paratone and prosodic phrasing), while the other group received an equal amount of product-oriented listening instruction. After the instructional treatment, learners in the prosody group outperformed those in the product-oriented group on comprehension of the target prosodic features, and on general listening proficiency tests. It is argued that short periods of instruction targeting prosodic features can improve the effectiveness of traditional product-oriented EAP listening instruction.

In her 2017 article ‘Research into practice: Listening strategies in an instructed classroom setting,’ Suzanne Graham outlines ways that research-derived principles of listening instruction have (not) been adopted in second language (L2) classrooms. She organizes her argument into three categories, discussing research findings that have not been well applied, those that have been over-applied, and areas she views as holding good potential for application. In this short response, I compare Graham's conclusions about the extent of research adoption to my own experiences as a language teacher and make additional comments about the application of those research findings in the context of post-secondary L2 English instruction.

This study investigated listener-based assessment of the job performance of second language (L2) speakers employed as customer service agents in outsourced foreign-based call centers, focusing on agents’ job performance as a function of the comprehensibility, fluency, and accentedness of their speech. Using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing platform, 116 native English-speaking listeners evaluated two-minute recordings of actual customer service conversations featuring 18 Filipino agents, assessing them for three global speech dimensions (comprehensibility, accentedness, and fluency) and three performance indicators, including agents’ confidence, competence, and listeners’ interest in future communication with agents (a measure capturing customer patronage). Comprehensibility and fluency consistently predicted how the listeners assessed the agents on all job performance scales, and accentedness was additionally associated with how strongly the listeners wished to communicate with the agents. Findings generally highlight the importance of fluent and comprehensible L2 speech in workplace settings.