Arab World English Journal (AWEJ) Volume 14. Number 1 March 2023 Pp.71-88
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awej/vol14no1.5
A Corpus-based Pronunciation Teaching Model: A Conceptual Paper
Bojie Qian
Language Academy, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru, Malaysia
&
School of Arts and Humanities
Wuhan University of Communication, Wuhan, China
Corresponding Author: cynthiaqbj@163.com
Farhana Diana Deris
Language Academy, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru, Malaysia
Received:12/03/2022 Accepted:01/31/2023 Published: 03/24/2023
Abstract:
Learning a second language is challenging, but mastering pronunciation is even more difficult. Researchers continuously seek new ways to improve students’ English abilities, such as listening and speaking, while ignoring the importance of pronunciation. After conducting a literature review, this article investigates the impact of corpora and two instructional methods on improving students’ pronunciation. The paper addresses how to teach pronunciation effectively in the context of English as a second language. According to the review, corpus resources, critical listening, and shadowing can all be used independently to enhance students’ proficiency in second language learning. Hence, an innovative Corpus-based Critical Listening and Shadowing model has been devised as an aid in the teaching of pronunciation by providing more specific suggestions for teachers and students, with the expectation that students will perform better once they have been taught pronunciation using the methodology. The current study’s findings have pedagogical and methodological implications for pronunciation teaching, learning and research. The implications and future directions of the innovative Corpus-based Critical Listening and Shadowing model are also discussed.
Keywords: Corpus-based research, critical listening, pronunciation teaching model, shadowing, conceptual paper
Cite as: Qian, B., & Deris, F. D. (2023). A Corpus-based Pronunciation Teaching Model: A Conceptual Paper.
Arab World English Journal, 14 (1) 71-88.
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awej/vol14no1.5
References
Abercrombie, D. (1949a). Some first principles. ELT Journal, 3(6), 141-146.
Abercrombie, D. (1949b). Teaching pronunciation. ELT Journal, 3(5), 113-122.
Abercrombie, D. (1956). Problems and principles: Studies in the teaching of English as a second language. London: Longmans, Green.
Andersen, G. (2010). How to use corpus linguistics in sociolinguistics. In A. O’Keeffe & M. McCarthy (eds.), The Routledge handbook of corpus linguistics (pp. 547-562). Routledge.
Baran-Łucarz, M. (2014). Pronunciation anxiety and willingness to communicate in the foreign language classroom. Concordia Papers in Applied Linguistics, 5, 36-49.
Bowen, J. D. (1972). Contextualizing pronunciation practice in the ESOL classroom. TESOL Quarterly, 6(1), 83-94.
Brumfit, C., & Johnson, K. (1979). The communicative approach to language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cao, R. (2016). Improving English Pronunciation Teaching and Learning via Speech Corpora of Learners with Dialectal Backgrounds. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET), 11(04), 90-94. https://doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v11i04.5461
Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D. M., & Goodwin, J. M. (1996). Teaching pronunciation: A reference for teachers of English to speakers of other languages. Cambridge University Press.
Chen, C. (2006). CiteSpace II: Detecting and visualizing emerging trends and transient patterns in scientific literature. Journal of the American Society for information Science and Technology, 57(3), 359-377.
Chen, M. L., Flowerdew, J., & Anthony, L. (2019). Introducing in-service English language teachers to data-driven learning for academic writing. System, 87. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2019.102148
Chen, N. F., & Li, H. (2016, Dec 13-16). Computer-assisted pronunciation training: From pronunciation scoring towards spoken language learning. In Asia-Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association Annual Summit and Conference (APSIPA) (pp. 1-7). Jeju, SOUTH KOREA.
Cherry, E. C., Halle, M., & Jakobson, R. (1953). Toward the logical description of languages in their phonemic aspect. Language, 34-46.
Couper, G. (2009). Teaching and learning L2 pronunciation: understanding the effectiveness of socially constructed metalanguage and critical listening in terms of a cognitive phonology framework [Doctor of Philosophy, University of New England]. Armidale, New South Wales, Australia.
Couper, G. (2011). What makes pronunciation teaching work? Testing for the effect of two variables: socially constructed metalanguage and critical listening. Language Awareness, 20(3), 159-182. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658416.2011.570347
Couper, G. (2015). Applying theories of language and learning to teaching pronunciation. In M. Reed & J. M. Levis (eds.), The handbook of English pronunciation (pp. 413-432). Wiley-Blackwell.
Crosthwaite, P., Wong, L. L. C., & Cheung, J. (2019). Characterising postgraduate students’ corpus query and usage patterns for disciplinary data-driven learning. ReCALL, 31(3), 255-275.
Crowther, D., Trofimovich, P., Isaacs, T., & Saito, K. (2015). Does a speaking task affect second language comprehensibility? Modern Language Journal, 99(1), 80-95. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12185
Davidson, S., Yamada, A., Fernandez-Mira, P., Carando, A., Gutierrez, C. H. S., & Sagae, K. (2020). Developing NLP tools with a new corpus of learner spanish. In 12th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC) (pp. 7238-7243). Marseille, FRANCE.
Derwing, T. M., & Munro, M. J. (2005). Second language accent and pronunciation teaching: A research‐based approach. TESOL Quarterly, 39(3), 379-397. https://doi.org/10.2307/3588486
Derwing, T. M., & Munro, M. J. (2015). Pronunciation fundamentals: Evidence-based perspectives for L2 teaching and research (Vol. 42). Amsterdam/Philadelphi: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Dong, J., & Lu, X. (2020). Promoting discipline-specific genre competence with corpus-based genre analysis activities. English for Specific Purposes, 58, 138-154. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2020.01.005
Ellis, R. (2015). Understanding second language acquisition 2nd Edition-Oxford applied linguistics. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Ernestus, M., & Warner, N. (2011). An introduction to reduced pronunciation variants. Journal of Phonetics, 39(SI), 253-260.
Esling, J. H., & Wong, R. F. (1983). Voice quality settings and the teaching of pronunciation. TESOL Quarterly, 17(1), 89-95.
Ferrari-Bridgers, F., & Murolo, S. (2022). Assessing ccritical listening skills in accounting community college students: An exploratory inquiry of how exercising listening skills positively impacts students’ test performance. Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, 85(4), 468–485. https://doi.org/10.1177/23294906221090504
Foote, J. A., & McDonough, K. (2017). Using shadowing with mobile technology to improve L2 pronunciation. Journal of Second Language Pronunciation, 3(1), 34-56. https://doi.org/10.1075/jslp.3.1.02foo
Fraser, H. (2001). Teaching pronunciation: A handbook for teachers and trainers. Three frameworks for an integrated approach. Sydney: New South Wales.
Fraser, H. (2006). Helping teachers help students with pronunciation: a cognitive approach. Prospect, 21(1), 80-96.
Fraser, H. (2009). Pronunciation as categorisation: The role of contrast in teaching English/R/and/L/. In A. Mahboob & C. Lipovsky (eds.), Studies in applied linguistics and language learning (pp. 289-306). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Fraser, H. (2010). Cognitive theory as a tool for teaching second language pronunciation. In D. K. Sabine, B. Frank, & D. R. Antoon (eds.), Fostering language teaching efficiency through cognitive linguistics (Vol. 17, pp. 357-379). Walter de Gruyter.
Fraser, H., & Perth, H. (1999). ESL pronunciation teaching: Could it be more effective. Australian Language Matters, 7(4), 7-8.
Galante, A., & Thomson, R. I. (2017). The effectiveness of drama as an instructional approach for the development of second language oral fluency, comprehensibility, and accentedness. TESOL Quarterly, 51(1), 115-142. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.290
Gardner, S., & Han, C. (2018). Transitions of contrast in Chinese and English university student Writing. Educational Sciences-Theory & Practice, 18(4), 861-882.
Gass, S. M. (1988). Integrating research areas: A framework for second language studies. Applied linguistics, 9(2), 198-217.
Gilson, L. L., & Goldberg, C. B. (2015). Editors’ comment: so, what is a cconceptual paper? Group & Organization Management, 40(2), 127-130. https://doi.org/10.1177/1059601115576425
Gluhareva, D., & Prieto, P. (2017). Training with rhythmic beat gestures benefits L2 pronunciation in discourse-demanding situations. Language Teaching Research, 21(5), 609-631. https://doi.org/10.1177/13621688166514
Gut, U. (2005). Corpus-based pronunciation training. In Proceedings of the pronunciation teaching and learning conference. University College London.
Gut, U. (2014). Corpus phonology and second language acquisition. In J. Durand, U. Gut, & G. Kristoffersen (eds.), The Oxford handbook of corpus phonology (pp. 286-301). Oxford University Press.
Haikun, T., Shiying, W., Xinsheng, L., & Yue, X. G. (2019). Speech recognition model based on deep learning and application in pronunciation quality evaluation system. In 2019 International conference on data mining and machine learning, ICDMML 2019 (pp. 1-5).
Hsieh, K.-T., Dong, D.-H., & Wang, L.-Y. (2013). A preliminary study of applying shadowing technique to English intonation instruction. Taiwan Journal of Linguistics, 11(2), 43-65.
Huang, L. F., Kubelec, S., Keng, N., & Hsu, L. H. (2018). Evaluating CEFR rater performance through the analysis of spoken learner corpora. Language Testing in Asia, 8(1), 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40468-018-0069-0
Jaakkola, E. (2020). Designing conceptual articles: four approaches. AMS review, 10(1), 18-26. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13162-020-00161-0
Kadota, S. (2019). Shadowing as a practice in second language acquisition: Connecting inputs and outputs. New York: Routledge.
Kang, O. (2012). Impact of rater characteristics and prosodic features of speaker accentedness on ratings of international teaching assistants’ oral performance. Language Assessment Quarterly, 9(3), 249-269. https://doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2011.642631
Kazu, H., & Demiralp, D. (2017). Comparison of critical listening proficiency of teacher candidates in terms of several variables. Eurasian Journal of Educational Research, 68, 81-95.
Kim, S., Seltzer, M. L., Li, J. Y., & Zhao, R. (2018, Aug 02-Sep 06). Improved training for online end-to-end speech recognition systems. In 19th Annual Conference of the International-Speech-Communication-Association (INTERSPEECH 2018) (pp. 2913-2917). Hyderabad, INDIA.
Lambert, S. (1992). Shadowing. Meta: Journal des traducteurs/Meta: Translators’ Journal, 37(2), 263-273.
Langacker, R. W. (1987). Foundations of cognitive grammar: Theoretical prerequisites (Vol. 1). Stanford university press.
Lee, E. J. (2016). Reducing international graduate students’ language anxiety through oral pronunciation corrections. System, 56, 78-95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2015.11.006
Li, Y., Li, H., & Wang, M. (2020). Orthographic learning via self-teaching in Chinese: The roles of phonological recoding, context, and phonetic and semantic radicals. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 199. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2020.104913
Livescu, K., & Glass, J. (2004). Feature-based pronunciation modeling for speech recognition. In Proceedings of HLT-NAACL 2004: Short Papers (pp. 81-84). Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Louvier, A. (1863). Das erste/zweite Jahr französischen Unterrichts [The first/second year of French teaching]. Ein Beitrag zum naturgemäßen Erlernen fremder Sprachen [A contribution to the natural learning of foreign languages], 2.
Louvier, A. (1889). Über naturgemässheit im fremdsprachlichen unterricht [On naturalness in foreign language teaching]. H. Grüning.
Lu, C. L., & Dang, T. N. Y. (2022). Vocabulary in EAP learning materials: What can we learn from teachers, learners, and corpora? System, 106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2022.102791
Lüdeling, A., & Kytö, M. (2008). Corpus linguistics: An international handbook (Vol. 1). Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter GmbH.
Ma, Q., Tang, J., & Lin, S. (2021). The development of corpus-based language pedagogy for TESOL teachers: a two-step training approach facilitated by online collaboration. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 35(9), 2731-2760. https://doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2021.1895225
McEnery, T., Xiao, R., & Tono, Y. (2006). Corpus-based language studies: An advanced resource book. Taylor & Francis.
McGregor, S. L. (2017). Understanding and evaluating research: A critical guide. California: Sage Publications.
McKee, R., Safar, J., & Alexander, S. P. (2021). Form, frequency and sociolinguistic variation in depicting signs in New Zealand Sign Language. Language & Communication, 79, 95-117.
Mompean, J. A., & Fouz-González, J. (2016). Twitter-based EFL pronunciation instruction. Language Learning & Technology, 20(1), 166-190.
Morley, J. (1991). The pronunciation component in teaching English to speakers of other languages. TESOL Quarterly, 25(3), 481-520. https://doi.org/10.2307/3586981
Ng, R. W. M., Kwan, A. C. M., Lee, T., & Hain, T. (2017). Shefce: A Cantonese-English bilingual speech corpus for pronunciation assessment 2017 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), New Orleans, USA.
Otto, P. (2021). Choosing specialized vocabulary to teach with data-driven learning: An example from civil engineering. English for Specific Purposes, 61, 32-46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2020.08.003
Passy, P. (1888). Our revised alphabet. The Phonetic Teacher, 57.
Pennington, M. C. (2021). Teaching pronunciation: The state of the art 2021. RELC Journal, 52(1), 3-21. https://doi.org/10.1177/00336882211002283
Pennington, M. C., & Rogerson-Revell, P. (2019). English pronunciation teaching and research: Contemporary perspectives (Vol. 10). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Pica, T. (1984). Activities with an Accent on. A Journal for the Teacher of English Outside the United States, 22(1-4), 1.
Pike, K. L. (1945). The intonation of American English. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.
Prator, C. H. (1951). Manual of American English pronunciation. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.
Prator, C. H., & Robinett, B. W. (1957). Manual of American English pronunciation (2nd ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.
Prator, C. H., & Robinett, B. W. (1972). Manual of American English pronunciation (3rd ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.
Prator, C. H., & Robinett, B. W. (1985). Manual of American English pronunciation (4th ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.
Qian, B., & Deris, F. D. (2023). Effective ways to improve the intermediate English learners’ pronunciation: A conceptual paper. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences (IJARBSS), 13(1), 504-512. http://dx.doi.org/10.6007/IJARBSS/v13-i1/16207
Rahimi, M., & Ruzrokh, S. (2016). The impact of teaching lingua franca core on English as a foreign language learners’ intelligibility and attitudes towards English pronunciation. Asian Englishes, 18(2), 141-156. https://doi.org/10.1080/13488678.2016.1173466
Reed, M., & Levis, J. M. (2015). The handbook of English pronunciation. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118346952
Richards, J. C., & Rodgers, T. S. (1986). Approaches and methods in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Saito, K., Webb, S., Trofimovich, P., & Isaacs, T. (2016). Lexical profiles of comprehensible second language speech: The role of appropriateness, fluency, variation, sophistication, abstractness, and sense eelations. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 38(4), 677-701. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0272263115000297
Spaulding, S., Chen, H. L., Ali, S., Kulinski, M., Breazeal, C., & Acm. (2018, Jul 10-15). A social robot ssystem for modeling children’s word pronunciation. In 17th International conference on autonomous agents and multiagent systems (AAMAS) (pp. 1658-1666). Stockholm, SWEDEN.
Stenson, N., Downing, B., Smith, J., & Smith, K. (1992). The effectiveness of computer-assisted pronunciation training. Calico Journal, 5-19.
Sugiarto, R., Prihantoro, P., & Edy, S. (2020). The impact of shadowing technique on tertiary students’ English pronunciation. Linguists: Journal Of Linguistics and Language Teaching, 6(1), 114-125.
Suzukida, Y., & Saito, K. (2021). Which segmental features matter for successful L2 comprehensibility? Revisiting and generalizing the pedagogical value of the functional load principle. Language Teaching Research, 25(3), 431-450. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168819858246
Swain, M. (1985). Communicative competence: Some roles of comprehensible input and comprehensible output in its development. Input in Second Language Acquisition, 15, 165-179.
Szyszka, M. (2011). Foreign language anxiety and self-perceived English pronunciation competence. Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, 1(2), 283-300.
Taylor, J. R. (2002). Cognitive grammar. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
Thompson, T., & Gaddes, M. (2005). The importance of teaching pronunciation to adult learners. Asian EFL Journal, 2(1), 1-11.
Van Schaik, E., Lynch, E., Stoner, S., & Sikorski, L. (2014). Can a web-based course improve communicative competence of foreign-born nurses? Language Learning & Technology, 18(1), 11-22.
Viëtor, W. (1905). Der Sprachunterricht muss umkehren!: ein Beitrag zur Überbürdungsfrage [Language teaching must change direction!: A contribution to the overburdening question]. Heilbronn: Henninger.
Wach, A. (2011). Native-speaker and English as a lingua franca pronunciation norms: English majors’ views. Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, 1(2), 247-266.
Wahid, R., & Sulong, S. (2013). The gap between research and practice in the teaching of English pronunciation: Insights from teachers’ beliefs and practices. World Applied Sciences Journal, 21(2013), 133-142.
Walker, R., & Zoghbor, W. (2015). The pronunciation of English as a lingua franca. In M. Reed & J. M. Levis (eds.), Handbook of English pronunciation (pp. 433-453). Blackwell Science Publ. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118346952.ch24
Wegener, S., Wang, H. C., Nation, K., & Castles, A. (2020). Tracking the evolution of orthographic expectancies over building visual experience. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 199. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2020.104912
Widdowson, H. G. (1978). Teaching language as communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press.