Training with rhythmic beat gestures benefits L2 pronunciation in discourse-demanding situations

Abstract

Recent research has shown that beat gestures (hand gestures that co-occur with speech in spontaneous discourse) are temporally integrated with prosodic prominence and that they help word memorization and discourse comprehension. However, little is known about the potential beneficial effects of beat gestures in second language (L2) pronunciation learning. This study investigates the impact of beat gesture observation on the acquisition of native-like speech patterns in English by examining the effect of a brief training with or without beat gestures on participants' ratings of accentedness. In a within-participants, pre-/post-test design, participants (undergraduate students learning English as a foreign language) watched a training video in which an L2 instructor gave spontaneous responses to discourse prompts. The prompts belonged to one of two categories (easy and difficult), and were presented by the instructor either with or without accompanying beat gestures. Participants' own answers to the prompts were recorded before and after training and evaluated by five native speaker judges. The results of the comparison between the participants' pre-training and post-training speech samples demonstrated that beat gesture training significantly improved the participants' accentedness ratings on the set of difficult (more discourse-demanding) items. The results of the study support the role of beat gestures as highlighters of rhythmic information and have implications for pronunciation instruction practices.

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

“…Rhythmic training sessions have proved useful to enhance the phonological perception of words and sentences [1,2,3], to help primary school children acquire reading skills [8], to improve oral production by children with cochlear implants [4], and to improve stress placement [5] and general pronunciation in learners of English [6,7]. In this study, we extend previous findings by showing in Exp.…”

“…Sentences pronounced after a rhythmic cue obtained better ratings in terms of native-likeness, but only for participants that performed worse in the natural condition. Finally, Gluhareva and Prieto [7] found positive effects of a short training session that involved observing rhythmic beat gestures-simple up-and-down or back-and-forth hand movements naturally coordinated with the prominent parts of speech-on L2 English pronunciation by Catalan learners. At posttest, participants that had observed the training with beat gestures significantly improved their accentedness ratings on a set of difficult items related to the training content.…”

“…Perhaps surprisingly, the possible facilitating effect of hand-clapping to the rhythm of the target L2 prosody has not yet been investigated. Whereas in [7], beat gestures were used to highlight higher levels of prosodic structure by marking nuclear pitch accents, hand-clapping lends itself to visually marking prosodic properties at the syllabic level, namely duration and intensity.…”

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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.

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Do gestures during training facilitate L2 lexical stress acquisition by Dutch learners of Spanish?

“…However, there are not many studies that looked into the facilitating role that gestures may play in L2 prosody acquisition. Gluhareva and Prieto [22] investigated the effects of beat gestures in a short training on L2 rhythm using a withinparticipants design. Catalan learners of English were presented with videos showing a native speaker of English replying to discourse prompts either with or without accompanying beat gestures.…”