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Devise A Pronunciation Experiment | ||
Tags: Scientific Research | Pronunciation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5178 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 1 of 49 29 March 2013 at 1:14am | IP Logged | ||
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If you could devise and execute any type of experiment in relation to L2 pronunciation
with a group of test learners, what would you like to test? Is there a specific method or technique you'd like to test or a myth you'd like to debunk? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5329 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 49 29 March 2013 at 5:03am | IP Logged | ||
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I'd love to do a long-term followup study of immigrants, to see how many sound like native speakers after 10 years in a constant L2 environment (working and living with locals).
Normally, when scientists look at accents in adults over the long term, they simply go out and find people who've been immersed for 10 years (or whatever period of time). But there's an obvious problem with this: How do you find people who are working really hard to blend in, and who no longer have a discernible accent? How would you even know they're immigrants? The easiest way to do this study would probably be to take a sample of newly-arrived grad students. Ten years later, when they're still struggling to finish their thesis / find a postdoc position that pays enough to eat / get onto the tenure track somehow, you could evaluate their accents again. Existing research suggests that about 5% of these people would sound indistinguishable from native speakers. But I bet if you're careful not to lose track of the people who are trying very hard to assimilate, that you'd find the real proportion is a bit higher. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4496 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 3 of 49 29 March 2013 at 9:51am | IP Logged | ||
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I would love to see a comparison between those who are not allowed to see the language written or take notes before they reach some basic level and those who are. It could be even more interesting if you could find some illiterate people and compare illiterate people taught using audio only, literate people taught using audio only and people who are allowed to use texts.
7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5004 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 49 29 March 2013 at 12:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'd be interested in testing how much specific pronunciation work really helps, especially for people who're not "naturally" good at picking up pronunciation and accents.
I suppose the idea would be to take a bunch of people who're all studying the same language and at a similar level, and do an experiment over a few months. The people would be divided into those who are "good with pronunciation" and those who're not (obviously that's a bit hard to quantify and it's hardly a yes/no thing, but I think you could get quite a decent idea by simply getting people to listen to and repeat some sample words and sentences in various unfamiliar languages and assessing how accurately the reproduce them), and then divide each of these into a group who will do specific pronunciation work and a group who won't. So you'll have: Group 1 - Not good with pronunciation, not working on it. Group 2 - Not good with pronunciation, working on it. Group 3 - Good with pronunciation, not working on it. Group 4 - Good with pronunciation, working on it. For a period of several months, all the people would study the language in a similar way, but groups 2 and 4 would do focused pronunciation work such as studying phonetics and working with a tutor specifically on pronunciation and accent, while groups 1 and 3 wouldn't and would just work on the other stuff like grammar, reading, listening, speaking, writing, etc.. At the end, you'd see how much the people in each group had improved their pronunciation. I'd obviously expect Group 4 to do best and Group 1 worst, but I'd be curious about Group 3 compared to Group 2. I'd most likely expect Group 3 to be better, but perhaps after a longer period, say a year or two, Group 2 could overtake, as the "naturals" might reach certain limits or get stuck in bad habits that the "non-naturals"' training could overcome. Comparing Group 4's results to Group 3's, and Group 2's to Group 1's, would also be interesting to gauge how effective pronunciation training really is. Of course I don't think this is a very realistic experiment - there's plenty points in between "good" and "not good", and way too many variables to control, for example people's different learning preferences. And of course you'd have to be clear what is meant by "good pronunciation" and take into account individual phonemes, general prosody and accent, and of course the part that's often neglected, voice quality. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4504 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 5 of 49 29 March 2013 at 12:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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Whether sound recognition improves pronunciation. For example, if it matters whether you
can recognise an aspirated p and a non-aspirated one, and how you can learn to distinguish between such phonological differences, and whether being able to distinguish sounds improves accent formation in a new language. I know for the longest time I could not tell the difference between a uvular and a trilled r, phonologically. Only when I had to learn the rolled r did I start listening and now I can tell with which r people speak. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5178 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 6 of 49 29 March 2013 at 3:47pm | IP Logged | ||
I lived in Burkina Faso for a little while and I met a lot of illiterate people who spoke French as a second language and I assure you their accent was no better... Are you assuming that if a student used Michel Thomas or Pimsleur only, at the beginning, he would have a better accent? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5178 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 7 of 49 29 March 2013 at 3:54pm | IP Logged | ||
Measuring improvement in a person's accent is indeed a problem. You could have the student read the same text over time, but then you not only have the interference of reading, but the student would inevitably improve as he's read the text before. You could have him talk about a topic several times over time; analyzing his speech in detail could lead to an appropriate method of measurement of accuracy, consistency and clarity. Another method would be to ask native speakers to vote on which of 2 or 3 recordings of a same speaker they find better, provided you eliminated other possible interference such as sound quality, etc. I think it's possible to come up with a usable method of evaluation. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5178 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 8 of 49 29 March 2013 at 3:56pm | IP Logged | ||
Ah, now we're getting closer to the type of experiment I'd like to run -- testing whether being able to make a sound, or learning to make it, is an efficient way to start hearing and distinguishing the sound. You seem to be saying that it worked that way for you, and several other people have made similar comments over time here on HTLAL. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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