A proper understanding of intelligibility is at the heart of effective pronunciation teaching, and with it, successful teaching of speaking and listening. Far from being an optional 'add-it-on-if-we-have-time' language feature, pronunciation is essential because of its tremendous impact on speech intelligibility. Pronunciation dramatically affects the ability of language learners to make themselves understood and to understand the speech of others. But not all elements of pronunciation are equally important. Some affect intelligibility a great deal, while others do not. With a strong emphasis on classroom practice and how pronunciation teaching can be more effectively approached in different teaching contexts, this book provides an important resource for pronunciation researchers, with a distinctly practical focus. It shows how intelligibility research informs pronunciation teaching within communicative classrooms, enabling language teachers to incorporate intelligibility findings into their teaching. Professionals interested in oral communication, pronunciation, and speech perception will find the book fascinating. 

pdf/intelligibility-oral-communication-and-the-teaching-of-tn23i2xq6n.pdf

Intelligibility, Oral Communication, and the Teaching of Pronunciation

We propose a new framework for conceptualizing measures of instructed L2 pronunciation proficiency according to three sets of parameters: (a) the constructs being focused on (global vs. specific), (b) the scoring method (human raters vs. acoustic analyses), and (c) the type of knowledge being elicited (controlled vs. spontaneous). Adopting the model (i.e., Framework for L2 Pronunciation Measurement) as a synthetic tool, we code the instruments found in 77 studies of L2 pronunciation teaching published between 1982 and 2017. We calculate the frequency of each measurement type and re-examine the interaction of instructional effectiveness and measurement within the sample. According to the results, instruction is most effective when it targets learners’ monitored production of specific segmental/suprasegmental features. The efficacy of instruction remains relatively unclear when gains are measured globally via subjective/human judgements especially at a spontaneous level. The findings are discussed to improve the designs in L2 pronunciation research and, more generally, strengthen the interface between pronunciation teaching, measurement and SLA.

/pdf/effects-of-second-language-pronunciation-teaching-revisited-2jt7brc39z.pdf

Effects of Second Language Pronunciation Teaching Revisited: A Proposed Measurement Framework and Meta-Analysis

In this paper, we introduce L2-ARCTIC, a speech corpus of non-native English that is intended for research in voice conversion, accent conversion, and mispronunciation detection. This initial release includes recordings from ten non-native speakers of English whose first languages (L1s) are Hindi, Korean, Mandarin, Spanish, and Arabic, each L1 containing recordings from one male and one female speaker. Each speaker recorded approximately one hour of read speech from the Carnegie Mellon University ARCTIC prompts, from which we generated orthographic and forced-aligned phonetic transcriptions. In addition, we manually annotated 150 utterances per speaker to identify three types of mispronunciation errors: substitutions, deletions, and additions, making it a valuable resource not only for research in voice conversion and accent conversion but also in computer-assisted pronunciation training. The corpus is publicly accessible at https://psi.engr.tamu.edu/l2-arctic-corpus/.

https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1227&context=engl_pubs

L2-ARCTIC: A Non-Native English Speech Corpus

rules and representations (such as those found in Chomsky & Halle, 1968). Let us take an example from stress placement. As any learner of English knows, the patterns of English stress placement are complex: robúst, énter, cínema, Appalàchicóla. Chomsky and Halle’s main stress rule was one of the first successful attempts to find patterns in English stress placement. To paraphrase and simplify (ignoring nouns): For verbs or adjectives, assign primary stress to the final vowel of the word if the word ends in a long vowel, or a short vowel followed by a consonant; otherwise stress the penultimate syllable. As Kaye (1990) pointed out: if this is a possible rule, what isn’t? The point to be made here is that, when looking at proposals like the main stress rule, linguists began to realize that grammatical models must be learnable based on the input that the learners are exposed to. It was no longer enough to find the patterns in the data. From this point on, linguistic theory began to offer real insights into the study of both first and second language acquisition. The rules proposed give us descriptions of where the L2 learner starts, where they want to end up and what their intermediate system looks like. J. Archibald

The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary English Pronunciation

/pdf/a-review-of-deep-learning-techniques-for-speech-processing-poglqdop.pdf

A review of deep learning techniques for speech processing

Both native and nonnative language teachers often find pronunciation a difficult skill to teach because of inadequate training or uncertainty about the effectiveness of instruction. But nonnative language teachers may also see themselves as inadequate models for pronunciation, leading to increased uncertainty about whether they should teach pronunciation (Golombek & Jordan, 2005). Although studies have regularly shown that instruction is effective in promoting pronunciation improvement (Saito, 2012), it is not known if improvement depends on the native language of the instructor, nor if learners improve differently depending on whether their teacher is native or nonnative. This study investigated the effect of teachers' first language on ratings of change in accentedness and comprehensibility. Learners in intact English classes were taught one class by a nonnative- and one by a native-English-speaking teacher. Each teacher taught the same pronunciation lessons over the course of 7 weeks. Results show that native listeners' ratings of the students' comprehensibility were similar for both teachers, despite many learners' stated preference for native teachers. The results offer encouragement to nonnative teachers in teaching pronunciation, suggesting that, like other language skills, instruction on pronunciation skills is more dependent on knowledgeable teaching practices than on native pronunciation of the teacher.

Native and Nonnative Teachers of L2 Pronunciation: Effects on Learner Performance

Accent conversion (AC) aims to transform non-native speech to sound as if the speaker had a native accent This can be achieved by mapping source spectra from a native speaker into the acoustic space of the non-native speaker In prior work, we proposed an AC approach that matches frames between the two speakers based on their acoustic similarity after compensating for differences in vocal tract length In this paper, we propose an approach that matches frames between the two speakers based on their phonetic (rather than acoustic) similarity Namely, we map frames from the two speakers into a phonetic posteriorgram using speaker-independent acoustic models trained on native speech We evaluate the proposed algorithm on a corpus containing multiple native and non-native speakers Compared to the previous AC algorithm, the proposed algorithm improves the ratings of acoustic quality (20% increase in mean opinion score) and native accent (69% preference) while retaining the voice identity of the non-native speaker

Accent Conversion Using Phonetic Posteriorgrams

Chapter 10. Students’ beliefs about native vs. non-native pronunciation teachers

Quality education for teaching pronunciation involves multiple areas of knowledge and practical skills. This paper proposes knowledge and skill descriptors for Development Phase 1 teachers for six areas related to pronunciation teaching and learning: values and attitudes, context, methodology, resources, assessment, and independent learning. Teacher training programs should ensure that teacher trainees value all English varieties and adopt intelligibility as the goal of teaching. They should also know that teachers with required professional competencies and from any language background can teach pronunciation. Teacher trainees should be able to create a pronunciation teaching curriculum for their teaching context, combine various teaching resources, and have required content and pedagogical knowledge. They should also be able to assess learners’ pronunciation improvement, help learners track their learning, and assign appropriate individual work. The descriptors are useful for teacher training programs and for experienced teachers who are new to pronunciation teaching.

Quality Teacher Education for Pronunciation Teaching in L2 Classrooms

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