Training ESL students to reproduce beat gestures in discourse leads to L2 pronunciation improvements
The main goal of the present study is to assess whether training foreign language students to reproduce natural beat gestures in discourse can trigger pronunciation gains. A total of 18 young adult Catalan learners of English with an intermediate proficiency level participated in a 15-minute discou...
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| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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UPV/EHU Press
2025-01-01
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| Series: | Anuario del Seminario de Filología Vasca "Julio de Urquijo" |
| Online Access: | https://ojs.ehu.eus/index.php/ASJU/article/view/25982 |
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| author | Pilar Prieto Olga Kushch Joan Borràs-Comes Daria Gluhareva Carmen Pérez-Vidal |
| author_facet | Pilar Prieto Olga Kushch Joan Borràs-Comes Daria Gluhareva Carmen Pérez-Vidal |
| author_sort | Pilar Prieto |
| collection | DOAJ |
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The main goal of the present study is to assess whether training foreign language students to reproduce natural beat gestures in discourse can trigger pronunciation gains. A total of 18 young adult Catalan learners of English with an intermediate proficiency level participated in a 15-minute discourse-based pronunciation training session. Participants were randomly assigned to two groups. While one group was asked to simply repeat the instructor’s multimodal responses to discourse prompts by focusing on speech, the other group was asked to repeat the utterances together with the natural beat gestures that the instructor was using. Before and after training, participants were recorded producing a discourse completion task and their speech was rated for accentedness. Results showed that participants who accompanied their verbal repetition with beat gestures during training significantly reduced their accentedness scores more than those who were asked to only repeat the utterances without reproducing the beat gestures. These results support recent findings that show the value of embodied prosodic training for pronunciation instruction.
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| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-8e748b232d124e22b9886c36ff79f23f |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 0582-6152 2444-2992 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-01-01 |
| publisher | UPV/EHU Press |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Anuario del Seminario de Filología Vasca "Julio de Urquijo" |
| spelling | doaj-art-8e748b232d124e22b9886c36ff79f23f2025-01-31T08:28:33ZengUPV/EHU PressAnuario del Seminario de Filología Vasca "Julio de Urquijo"0582-61522444-29922025-01-0157(1-2)10.1387/asju.25982Training ESL students to reproduce beat gestures in discourse leads to L2 pronunciation improvementsPilar Prieto0Olga Kushch 1Joan Borràs-Comes2Daria Gluhareva3Carmen Pérez-Vidal 4ICREA, Universitat Pompeu FabraUniversidad NebrijaUniversitat de BarcelonaSimon Fraser UniversityUniversitat Pompeu Fabra The main goal of the present study is to assess whether training foreign language students to reproduce natural beat gestures in discourse can trigger pronunciation gains. A total of 18 young adult Catalan learners of English with an intermediate proficiency level participated in a 15-minute discourse-based pronunciation training session. Participants were randomly assigned to two groups. While one group was asked to simply repeat the instructor’s multimodal responses to discourse prompts by focusing on speech, the other group was asked to repeat the utterances together with the natural beat gestures that the instructor was using. Before and after training, participants were recorded producing a discourse completion task and their speech was rated for accentedness. Results showed that participants who accompanied their verbal repetition with beat gestures during training significantly reduced their accentedness scores more than those who were asked to only repeat the utterances without reproducing the beat gestures. These results support recent findings that show the value of embodied prosodic training for pronunciation instruction. https://ojs.ehu.eus/index.php/ASJU/article/view/25982 |
| spellingShingle | Pilar Prieto Olga Kushch Joan Borràs-Comes Daria Gluhareva Carmen Pérez-Vidal Training ESL students to reproduce beat gestures in discourse leads to L2 pronunciation improvements Anuario del Seminario de Filología Vasca "Julio de Urquijo" |
| title | Training ESL students to reproduce beat gestures in discourse leads to L2 pronunciation improvements |
| title_full | Training ESL students to reproduce beat gestures in discourse leads to L2 pronunciation improvements |
| title_fullStr | Training ESL students to reproduce beat gestures in discourse leads to L2 pronunciation improvements |
| title_full_unstemmed | Training ESL students to reproduce beat gestures in discourse leads to L2 pronunciation improvements |
| title_short | Training ESL students to reproduce beat gestures in discourse leads to L2 pronunciation improvements |
| title_sort | training esl students to reproduce beat gestures in discourse leads to l2 pronunciation improvements |
| url | https://ojs.ehu.eus/index.php/ASJU/article/view/25982 |
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