Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-21T19:40:14.413Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE ROLE OF TASK REPETITION IN LEARNING WORD-STRESS PATTERNS THROUGH AUDITORY PRIMING TASKS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 April 2017

YeonJoo Jung ,
YouJin Kim  and
John Murphy
YeonJoo Jung*
Affiliation:
Georgia State University
YouJin Kim
Affiliation:
Georgia State University
John Murphy
Affiliation:
Georgia State University
*
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to YeonJoo Jung, Department of Applied Linguistics & ESL, Georgia State University, 15th floor, 25 Park Place, Atlanta, GA 30303. E-mail: yjung9@gsu.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study focused on an instructional component often neglected when teaching the pronunciation of English as either a second, foreign, or international language—namely, the suprasegmental feature of lexical stress. Extending previous research on collaborative priming tasks and task repetition, the study investigated the impact of task and procedural repetition on eliciting target-stress patterns during collaborative priming tasks. It employed a pretest-posttest design with 57 Korean high school students who were randomly assigned to one of three groups: a control, priming with task repetition, and priming with procedural repetition. Learners participated in a pretest, two priming sessions, and two posttests over a 4-week period. Learners’ ability to produce target-stress patterns was measured through sentence read-aloud tasks. The task repetition group repeated the same primes and prompts twice, whereas the procedural repetition group performed priming tasks with different primes and prompts during two sessions. Results indicate that the amount of primed production was significantly more than unprimed production. Additionally, both experimental conditions promoted learners’ accurate production of target-stress patterns, though, in relation to long-term impacts, repeating the same task (i.e., same procedure and same content) twice was more effective than repeating the procedure for a second time with different content. The results are discussed in light of pronunciation teaching using auditory priming tasks.

Type
Articles
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 39 , Special Issue 2: TBLT and L2 Pronunciation: Do the Benefits of Tasks Extend Beyond Grammar and Lexis? , June 2017 , pp. 319 - 346
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

We would like to thank the editors and three anonymous reviewers who provided helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. Special thanks go to the editors of the special issue, Laura Gurzynski-Weiss, Avizia Y. Long, and Megan Solon for their insightful and valuable suggestions. Any remaining errors are our own.

References

REFERENCES

Ahmadian, M. J., & Tavakoli, M. (2011). The effects of simultaneous use of careful online planning and task repetition on accuracy, complexity, and fluency in EFL learners’ oral production. Language Teaching Research, 15, 35–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Altmann, H. (2006). The perception and production of second language stress: A cross-linguistic experimental study (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Newark: Delaware University.Google Scholar
Anderson, P. (1993). The interstress interval as an indicator of perceived intelligibility among nonnative speakers of English (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Wichita, KS: Wichita State University.Google Scholar
Anderson-Hsieh, J., Johnson, R., & Koehler, K. (1992). The relationship between native speaker judgements of nonnative pronunciation and deviance in segmentals, prosody and syllable structure. Language Learning, 42, 529–555.Google Scholar
Ashby, J., & Clifton, C. Jr. (2005). The prosodic property of lexical stress affects eye movements during silent reading. Cognition, 96, B89–100.Google Scholar
Boersma, P., & Weenink, D. (2015). Praat: Doing phonetics by computer (Version 5.4.06) [Computer program]. Retrieved from http://www.praat.org/ Google Scholar
Branigan, H. P., Pickering, M. J., Pearson, J., & McLean, J. F. (2010). Linguistic alignment between people and computers. Journal of Pragmatics, 42, 2355–2368.Google Scholar
Brennan, S. E., & Clark, H. H. (1996). Conceptual pacts and lexical choice in conversation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 22, 1482–1493.Google Scholar
Bygate, M. (1996). Effects of task repetition: Apprising the developing language of learners. In Willis, D. & Willis, J. (Eds.), Challenge and change in language teaching (pp. 136–146). London, UK: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Bygate, M. (2001). Effects of task repetition on the structure and control of language. In Bygate, M., Skehan, P., & Swain, M. (Eds.), Researching pedagogic tasks: Second language learning, teaching, and assessment (pp. 23–48). London, UK: Longman.Google Scholar
Caspers, J., & Kępińska, O. (2011). The influence of word-level prosodic structure of the mother tongue on production of word stress in Dutch as a second language. In Lee, W. -S. & Zee, E. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, The City University of Hong Kong, 17–21 August (pp. 420–423). Hong Kong: The City University of Hong Kong.Google Scholar
Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D. M., Goodwin, J. M., & Griner, B. (2010). Teaching pronunciation hardback with audio CDs (2): A course book and reference guide (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Collentine, J., & Collentine, K. (2013). A corpus approach to studying structural convergence in task-based Spanish L2 interactions. In McDonough, K. & Mackey, A. (Eds.), Second language interaction in diverse educational contexts (pp. 167–187). Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34, 213–238.Google Scholar
DeKeyser, R. (2007). Skill acquisition theory. In VanPatten, B. & Williams, J. (Eds.), Theories in second language acquisition: An introduction (pp. 97–114). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Derwing, T. M. (2010). Utopian goals for pronunciation teaching. In Levis, J. & LeVelle, K. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 1st Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference, Iowa State University, Ames, 17–19 September (pp. 24–37). Ames: Iowa State University.Google Scholar
Derwing, T., & Munro, M. J. (2014). Once you have been speaking a second language 34 for years, it’s too late to change your pronunciation. In Grant, L. (Ed.), Pronunciation myths: Applying second language research to classroom teaching (pp. 34–55). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Eckman, F. R. (1991). The structural conformity hypothesis and the acquisition of consonant clusters in the interlanguage of ESL learners. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 13, 23–41.Google Scholar
Erdmann, P. H. (1973). Patterns of stress-transfer in English and German. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 11, 229–241.Google Scholar
Escudero, P., & Boersma, P. (2004). Bridging the gap between L2 speech perception research and phonological theory. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 26, 551–585.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Field, J. (2005). Intelligibility and the listener: The role of lexical stress. TESOL Quarterly, 39, 399–423.Google Scholar
Fokes, J., & Bond, Z. S. (1989). The vowels of stressed and unstressed syllables in nonnative English. Language Learning, 39, 341–373.Google Scholar
Goodwin, J. (2014). Teaching pronunciation. In Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D. M., & Snow, M. A. (Eds.), Teaching English as a second or foreign language (4th ed.) (pp. 136–152). Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.Google Scholar
Grant, L. (2014). Pronunciation myths: Applying second language research to classroom teaching. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Jenkins, J. (2002). A sociolinguistically based, empirically researched pronunciation syllabus for English as an international language. Applied Linguistics, 23, 83–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Y. (2013). Effects of pretask modelling on attention to form and question development. TESOL Quarterly, 47, 8–35.Google Scholar
Kim, Y., & McDonough, K. (2008). Learners’ production of passives during syntactic priming activities. Applied Linguistics, 29, 149–154.Google Scholar
Kim, Y., & Tracy-Ventura, N. (2013). The role of task repetition in L2 performance development: What needs to be repeated during task-based interaction? System, 41, 829–840.Google Scholar
Levelt, W. J. M. (1989). Speaking: From intention to articulation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lord, G. (2001). The second language acquisition of Spanish stress: Derivational, analogical or lexical? (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University Park: Pennsylvania State University.Google Scholar
Lynch, T., & Maclean, J. (2000). Exploring the benefits of task repetition and recycling for classroom language learning. Language Teaching Research, 4, 221–250.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mackey, A., Abbuhl, R., & Gass, S. (2012). Interactional approach. In Gass, S. & Mackey, A. (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 7–23). New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mackey, D., & Savage, A. (2011). Read this! Level 2. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McDonough, K. (2006). Interaction and syntactic priming: English L2 speakers’ production of dative constructions. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 28, 179–207.Google Scholar
McDonough, K., & Kim, Y. (2009). Syntactic priming, type frequency, and EFL learners’ production of wh-questions. The Modern Language Journal, 93, 386–398.Google Scholar
McDonough, K., & Trofimovich, P. (2009). Using priming methods in second language research. New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
McDonough, K., Neumann, H., & Trofimovich, P. (2015). Eliciting Production of L2 Target Structures through Priming Activities. Canadian Modern Language Review, 71, 75–95.Google Scholar
Ministry of Education, Science & Technology (2009). The national English curriculum. Seoul, Korea: MEST.Google Scholar
Munro, M., & Derwing, T. (1995). Foreign accent, comprehensibility, and intelligibility in the speech of second language learners. Language Learning, 45, 73–97.Google Scholar
Munro, M. J., & Derwing, T. M. (2015). A prospectus for pronunciation research in the 21st century: A point of view. Journal of Second Language Pronunciation, 1, 11–42.Google Scholar
Murphy, J. M. (2004). Attending to word-stress while learning new vocabulary. English for Specific Purposes, 23, 67–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, J. M. (2014). Intelligible, comprehensible, non-native models in ESL/EFL pronunciation teaching. System, 42, 258–269.Google Scholar
Murphy, J. M., & Kandil, M. (2004). Word-level stress patterns in the academic word list. System: An International Journal of Educational Technology and Applied Linguistics, 32, 61–74.Google Scholar
Pardo, J. S. (2006). On phonetic convergence during conversational interaction. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 119, 2382–2393.Google Scholar
Patanasorn, C. (2010). Effect of procedural content and task repetition on accuracy and fluency in an EFL context (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Flagstaff: Northern Arizona University.Google Scholar
Pennington, M. (1994). Recent research in L2 phonology: Implications for practice. In Morley, J. (Ed.), Pronunciation pedagogy and theory: New views, new directions (pp. 92–108). Alexandria, VA: TESOL.Google Scholar
Pica, T. (1994). Questions from the language classroom: Research perspectives. TESOL Quarterly, 28, 49–79.Google Scholar
Pickering, M. J., & Garrod, S. (2004). Toward a mechanistic psychology of dialogue. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27, 169–225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samuda, V., & Bygate, M. (2008). Tasks in second language learning. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Sato, E. (2007). A guide to linguistic modification: Strategies for increasing English language learner access to academic content (Paper developed for the U.S. Department of Education LEP Partnership).Google Scholar
Savage, A. (2010). Read this! Level 3. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sifakis, N. C. (2014). Teaching pronunciation in the post-EFL era: Lessons from ELF and implications for teacher education. English as a Foreign Language Teacher Education: Current Perspectives and Challenges, 27, 127–146.Google Scholar
Sohn, H.-M. (1999). The Korean language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Swan, M., & Smith, B. (2001). Learner English: A teacher’s guide to interference and other problems (2nd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Trofimovich, P., & Gatbonton, E. (2006). Repetition and focus on form in processing L2 Spanish words: Implications for pronunciation instruction. Modern Language Journal, 90, 519–535.Google Scholar
Trofimovich, P., & Isaacs, T. (2012). Disentangling accent from comprehensibility. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15, 905–916.Google Scholar
Trofimovich, P., McDonough, K., & Foote, J. A. (2014). Interactive alignment of multisyllabic stress patterns in a second language classroom. TESOL Quarterly, 48, 815–832.Google Scholar
Trofimovich, P., McDonough, K., & Neumann, H. (2013). Using collaborative tasks to elicit auditory and structural priming. TESOL Quarterly, 47, 177–186.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, R. (2010). Teaching the pronunciation of English as a lingua franca. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar