Prosodic and Segmental Aspects of Pronunciation Training and Their Effects on L2

Abstract

Some studies on training effects of pronunciation instruction have claimed that the training of prosodic features has effects at the segmental level and that the training of segmental features has effects at the prosodic level, with greater effects reported when prosody is the main focus of training. This paper revisits this claim by looking at the effects of pronunciation training on Italian learners of German. In a pre-post-test design, we investigate acoustic changes after training in learners’ productions of two features regarded as prosodic and two features regarded as segmental. The prosodic features were the pitch excursion of final rises in yes–no questions and the reduction in schwa epenthesis in word-final closed syllables. The segmental features were final devoicing and voice onset time (VOT) in plosives. We discuss the results for three groups (with segmental training, with prosody training, and with no pronunciation training). Our results indicate that there are positive effects of prosody-oriented training on the production of segments, especially when training focuses on syllable structure and prosodic prominence (stress and accent). They also indicate that teaching segmental and prosodic aspects of pronunciation together is beneficial.

After Self-Imitation Prosodic Training L2 Learners Converge Prosodically to the Native Speakers

“…This last level of analysis will help us gain insight into whether the impact of prosodic training can also lead to enhancements in the pronunciation of Italian segments, as has been evidenced for other languages and non-native accents (for Italian learners of German, cf. Dahmen et al 2023; for Catalan learners of French, cf. Li et al 2023).…”

Can L2 Pronunciation Be Evaluated without Reference to a Native Model? Pillai Scores for the Intrinsic Evaluation of L2 Vowels

“…So, it would be unreasonable to expect measures of vowel overlap to explain a large amount of variance in global native ratings. On the other hand, various features may progress together during the process of L2 pronunciation acquisition: there is evidence that pronunciation training on some aspects leads to improvements in other aspects too, for example, training in prosody can bring improvements in segmental features (Dahmen et al 2023). This means that, although vowel accuracy is merely one of many parameters that contribute to shaping listeners' impressions of comprehensibility or nativelikeness, it may itself be correlated to other segmental or suprasegmental parameters.…”