Saito, Kazuya and Suzukida, Y. and Sun, H. (2019) Aptitude, experience and second language pronunciation proficiency development in classroom settings: a longitudinal study. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 41 (1), pp. 201-225. ISSN 0272-2631.
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Abstract
The current study longitudinally examined the influence of aptitude on second language (L2) pronunciation development when 40 first-year Japanese university students engaged in practice activities inside and outside English-as-a-Foreign-Language classrooms over one academic year. Spontaneous speech samples were elicited at the beginning, middle and end points of the project, analyzed for global, segmental, syllabic, prosodic and temporal aspects of L2 pronunciation, and linked to their aptitude and experience profiles. Results indicated that the participants generally enhanced the global comprehensibility of their speech (via reducing vowel insertion errors in complex syllables) as a function of increased classroom experience during their first semester, and explicit learning aptitude (associative memory, phonemic coding) appeared to help certain learners further enhance their pronunciation proficiency through the development of fluency and prosody. In the second semester, incidental learning ability (sound sequence recognition) was shown to be a significant predictor of the extent to which certain learners continued to improve and ultimately attain advanced-level L2 comprehensibility, largely thanks to improved segmental accuracy.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication following peer review. The version of record is available online at the link above. |
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication |
| Depositing User: | Kazuya Saito |
| Date Deposited: | 24 Nov 2017 09:29 |
| Last Modified: | 09 Aug 2023 12:42 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/20341 |
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