The Effects of Communicative Pronunciation Instruction on Suprasegmental Performance in an EFL Context

Abstract

Abstract-This study investigated the effects of communicative suprasegmental instruction on Iranian EFL learners' pronunciation performance. To this end, 24 pre-intermediate EFL learners were randomly assigned to two groups: the experimental group receiving communicative pronunciation instruction in which after receiving conventional explicit instruction students were given communicative tasks to practice learned features, and the control group receiving only conventional explicit exercise-based instruction. The learners' pronunciations were assessed in controlled read-aloud and communicative picture-description/picture-driven contexts in terms of two suprasegmental features (i.e. compound words stress and interrogative intonation). The results of the study revealed that the explicit exercise-based instruction was significantly effective in controlled contexts but modestly effective in communicative picture-description and picture-driven tasks. On the contrary, communicative pronunciation instruction was not only significantly effective in the controlled context but also in communicative tasks. This finding reveals that communicative suprasegmental instruction is more effective than conventional explicit instruction in both controlled and communicative language production contexts. In the end, some pedagogical implications of the findings are also discussed.

Prácticas basales para enseñar pronunciación del inglés en contextos terciarios de posvirtualidad

“…En la misma línea, Nazari y Mirsaeeidi (2017) demostraron que los ejercicios comunicativos basados en tareas específicas resultan ser una herramienta pedagógica que ayuda a los estudiantes a transitar hacia la automatización de un rasgo de la pronunciación aprendido previamente, que después podría ser reflejado en situaciones comunicativas orales reales. Además, este enfoque comunicativo fue efectivo tanto en actividades controladas como en prácticas más espontáneas (Nazari y Mirsaeeidi, 2017), lo cual es un aspecto significativo para el presente estudio. Cabe mencionar que los ejercicios de repetición (drillaje) también cumplen un rol fundamental en la última fase de la aplicación de las prácticas basales.…”