Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Advanced Research in Education
Year: 2024
DOI:
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The Effect of Perception-Based Training on Pronunciation of L2 Saudi Learners in EFL Context
Haifa Algothami
ABSTRACT:
The ongoing debate as to whether perception or production facilitate acquisition in L2 is reflected in research on L2 pronunciation instruction (PI). This study extends previous ones investigating the intricate relationship between perception and production and the effectiveness of perceptual phonetic training on pronunciation accuracy. Also, the current study goes beyond previous research by including non-native English speakers as a legitimate model in teaching English, by incorporating samples of proficient NNE speech into the training and investigating the influence of these samples both on pronunciation. A pre-, post-, and delayed-post-test design was implemented to assess the effect of two weeks of perceptual phonetic training on pronunciation improvement, with 45 Saudi learners in an EFL setting. They were divided into three groups: two experimental groups received perceptual phonetic training with either native English speaker (NEs) recordings or Saudi English speaker recordings as models; the third group was the control group, who received no perceptual training. Two types of data were collected at each time point: a perception task (identification task) and a production task in which learners were given simple sentences in the present tense and they were asked to transform them to the future tense and record their production. The gain scores for each training group in both domains (perception and production) from the pre-test to the immediate post-test and from the pre-test to the delayed post-test were conducted. The descriptive statistics at each time point and the two sets of gain scores were compared and investigated formally using a mixed effect model. The magnitude of group differences for the two conditions of training were illustrated by calculating the effect sizes expressing the standardized mean difference for all contrasts. The result showed that perception was high both pre and post, but there is more variation in production.
keywords: accuracy, non-native speaker, phonetic training, perceptual test, production test