Second Language Pronunciation. Группа авторов

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an interpretive analysis, examining given and new information, speaker’s perceived attitude toward content, and speaker’s perceived attitude toward audience. Ted Talks are generally recognized as informative monologues presented with the intent to persuade and educate in an effective manner, and are exemplars of successful communication. Speakers make an overall impression on their listeners not only through the content of what they say, but how they say it in real time. McGregor et al. showed in this study that intonation conveyed the speaker’s attitude toward both the content and the audience – thus it carried meaning that goes far beyond the typical atomistic treatment of intonation in pronunciation texts (e.g., raise pitch at the end of a yes/no question). Intonation, they argue, contributes to meaning-making in a holistic way and should be taught as such. They suggest bringing students’ attention to the general impression created by the speaker, followed by an examination of how that impression was developed by examining the structure of the talk.

      Readers Theater

      Drama

      Moving beyond Readers Theater, Galante and Thomson (2017) conducted an experiment to determine whether the inclusion of drama in ESL classrooms would improve learners’ comprehensibility, fluency, and accentedness. Although drama can include scripted elements, it also extends to improvisational roleplays. The authors worked with four low intermediate classes, two of which comprised a Comparison group who followed a standard communicative program incorporating pair and group work but no drama activities. The experimental classes undertook a wide range of drama activities and ultimately wrote and performed their own play at the end of term.

      Pre- and post-intervention listening tests were designed for 30 listeners, who rated speech samples for fluency, comprehensibility, and accentedness. The Drama group exhibited significant improvement in fluency ratings, but no changes were noted in the Comparison group. Both groups improved in comprehensibility over time, although it appears as though the Drama group made slightly more gains. As with many other pronunciation studies, no difference in accent ratings was noted over time.

      Debates

      Pragmatic Speech Acts

      Derwing et al. (2021) hypothesized that predictability in speech contributes to overall comprehensibility. They tested this by teaching the pragmatics of four speech acts (compliments, requests, polite refusals, and apologies) to intermediate learners of English through the use of role-plays. Aspects of each speech act were taught explicitly; for instance, requests were broken down into Interruptions (Do you have a minute?/Sorry to interrupt), Explanations (The school called and my child is sick), Requests (Can I leave a bit early to pick him up?) and Solutions (I can make up the time tomorrow). The students watched videos of appropriate and inappropriate speech acts, and then practiced scenarios on their own. They were in turn video-recorded, and they watched each other’s role-plays and offered suggestions for improvement. The students were deeply engaged with the classes, and felt as though they were learning “the flow of Canadian speaking, which is different from back home speaking” (p. 124). Pre- and post-recordings of two requests and two polite refusals (considered the most difficult of the speech acts taught) were played to listeners who rated them for social appropriateness, comprehensibility, and fluency. All four scenarios were rated as significantly more socially appropriate after instruction. All but one of the scenarios was rated as significantly more comprehensible, suggesting that predictability does make it easier for listeners to process L2 speech. Only one scenario was rated as significantly more fluent post-intervention; one was significantly less fluent, and two were unchanged. The authors attribute this finding to the relative difficulty of negotiating the pragmatics of these speech acts.

      This volume is rich with ideas from research that can inform pronunciation instruction in the classroom. Empirical studies offer extremely helpful ideas to teachers, and they provide insights as to why certain activities will have beneficial outcomes. However, knowing about some new activities and understanding why they may be useful is likely not enough to encourage a teacher who has not had any training in pronunciation to try implementing some of these ideas. The first step is always to determine where students’ pronunciation problems lie, and this is often the most difficult.

      We suggest not doing this alone; a new endeavor will be easier to undertake with one or two colleagues. In one of the first classes in a language course, students should be asked to send a short (2–3 minutes) recording to their teacher on an easy topic such as “My favorite food” or “my happiest moment” or “my daily routine.” Teachers could also ask their students to describe a picture and send the recording. To assess where intelligibility and comprehensibility problems lie, two or three teachers should listen to these recordings together. Listening for specific aspects of speech helps to isolate problems – “once for overall comprehensibility, once for word stress, once for sentence stress, once for vowels, and finally consonants” (Derwing, in press). When each student’s most difficult problems have been identified, it is time to make a plan for both in-class and homework activities. (Note that some students may not have any features in their speech that interfere with comprehensibility.) If several students share specific difficulties, then classroom activities can be considered (often suprasegmentals will fall into this category). If individual students are struggling with certain segments, the teacher must then determine if the problem is related to perception, production, or both by doing a simple perception test. For example, if a student produces a /b/ where a /p/ is warranted, teachers can display a minimal pair, and produce one of the words. If the students can perceive

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