Hand-clapping to the rhythm of newly learned words improves L2 pronunciation: Evidence from Catalan and Chinese learners of French

Abstract

Previous research has shown that rhythmic training enhances phonological speech processing (e.g., [1,2,3,4]). Yet little is known about whether rhythmic training can also help to improve pronunciation in a second language (but see [5,6,7]). This study tests the potential benefits of hand-clapping to the rhythm of newly learned French words for the acquisition of pronunciation patterns by Catalan children and Chinese adolescents. In two between-subjects experiments with a pretest and posttest design, participants either repeated words while clapping the rhythmic structure of words or only repeated the words. The French target words were very similar to their lexical counterparts in Catalan, whereas they differed completely from Chinese. Participants' oral production before and after training was rated for accentedness by three French native speakers. Results showed a significant improvement for the clapping group among the Catalan participants, whereas only a near significant tendency appeared for the Chinese adolescents. Individual musical abilities did not interact significantly with the results in either experiments but working memory played a significant role in Chinese participants' pronunciation. The results show that a short phonological training session based on highlighting the rhythmic structure of words seems to help improve pronunciation in a foreign language as long as there is little demand placed on semantic processing.

The Efficacy of Gesture on Second Language Pronunciation: An Exploratory Study of Handclapping as a Classroom Instructional Tool

“…First, handclaps are suited to the temporal nature of Japanese—each clap can represent one mora. Further, handclapping has been found in general to be promising in previous studies of L2 pronunciation instruction (Baills et al., 2018; Zhang et al., 2018). Under McNeill's (1992) classification of gestures, handclapping may be considered both a metaphoric gesture and a beat gesture: It visually presents the underlying number of moras in the target word (metaphoric) but also expresses the rhythm of speech in Japanese (beat).…”

“…Third, Hirata et al. 's (2014) training included a vocabulary learning task as well as a phonological learning task, which might have caused cognitive overload (see e.g., Baills, Zhang, & Prieto, 2018), especially given that the participants were completely new to the language. Thus, there has been a need for studies that focus solely on the phonological property in question to maximize its possible efficacy.…”

Observing and Producing Durational Hand Gestures Facilitates the Pronunciation of Novel Vowel-Length Contrasts

“…The results showed that observing beat gestures improved participants' pronunciation of the more difficult items. In similar studies, clapping hands to the rhythm of words has also been found helpful in improving L2 pronunciation (Baills et al, 2018;Zhang et al, 2018).…”

Listening to Songs and Singing Benefitted Initial Stages of Second Language Pronunciation but Not Recall of Word Meaning

“…However, the experimental task of repeating a string of words for 10 minutes without any clear sentential meaning lacked ecological validity and may have led to boredom. Finally, an experimental study by Baills, Zhang, and Prieto (2018) found that handclapping to the rhythmic structure of words improved L2 pronunciation and a recent experimental study in a classroom setting by Iizuka, Nakatsukasa, and Braver (2020) found that hand-clapping benefitted the perception of segmental phonology, suggesting a potential role for providing rhythmic support in the learning of pronunciation.…”