Examining the Link between Perception and Production: Practical Applications

Examining the Link between Perception and Production: Practical Applications
Justin R. Shewell
TESOL International 2011
New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
March 18, 2011, 7:30 – 8:15
Convention Center, Room 206
jshewell@asu.edu
http://jshewell.com/cv

Overview
Why Perception?
What is the role of perception in acquisition of English pronunciation skills
Is perception teachable?
The POSE Test
the overall format and rationale
sample items
Diagnosing problems
Practice activities
Q & A

Why Perception?
Research suggests that accurate perception of segmentals leads to more accurate production of these sounds
Flege and Eefting, 1987
Schneiderman, Bourdages, and Champagne, 1988
Ingram and Park, 1997
Chan, 2001
No research available for suprasegmentals
see Trofimovich& Baker, 2006;Chun, 2002

Why Perception?
Research also indicates that training in speech perception leads to improvement in both perception and production of English sounds
de Bot, 1983
Cenoz and Lecumberri, 1999
Champane-Muzar,Schneiderman, andBourdages, 1993

Why Perception?
Students must take responsibility for their production mistakes in order to improve (Acton, 1984; Morley, 1991).
Perception plays animportant role in self-monitoring speechproduction (Shewell, 2004;Zheng et. al, 2009)

What is the POSE Test?
The Perception of Spoken English Test
Consists of five areas
Vowels
Consonants
Word Stress
Intonation (2 sections)‏
Sentence Stress(2 sections)‏

What is the POSE Test?
Each item involves listening to a recorded sentence/word and then choosing from listed options the choice that best matches what was heard on the recording
Each item uses minimal-pair sentences to helpdiagnose problems

Why Minimal-Pair Sentences?
Comparable to communicative environment in the “real world”
Stress, intonation and other linguistic features remain the same (except for substituted word or suprasegmental feature) (Mora, 1998)

Vowels and Consonants
Items chosen based on functional load (Catford, 1987)
Consonants: focused only on syllable initial/final contrasts (no medial contrasts)‏
Images were used to helpovercome possible problemswith reading skills.
Images and items camefrom Pronunciation Matters(Henrichsen et. al, 1999)or were original

Vowels and Consonants
Vowels: 38 total items (11 contrasts with up to 4 items per contrast)
Consonants: 84 total items (25 contrasts with up to 4 items each)
Some contrasts only have 2 items
Arabic (Islamic) version has some items removed, leaving 37 and78 respectively

Vowels: Example Item

Consonants: Example Item

Word Stress
Items contained two to five syllables
Items represented different parts of speech
Presented in isolation to avoidproblems with grammar andother linguistic features beingused to determine answer

Word Stress: Example Item

Intonation
Two sections (item types)‏
Question/Statement
Tag Questions
Both focus on rising/falling intonation
Items came from a testdeveloped by Amber Paugaand Brent Green at BYU-Hawaii or were original

Intonation Section 1: Example Item

Intonation Section 2: Example Item

Sentence Stress
Two sections
Stressed word
Thought groups (Gilbert, 2005) or pauses
Items were original or taken from Pronunciation Matters (Henrichsen et. al)‏
Each item presented with arejoinder that distinguished the difference in meaning on thescreen but not in the audio file

Sentence Stress Section 1: Example Item

Sentence Stress Section 2: Example Item

Diagnosing Problems:Vowels & Consonants

Diagnosing Problems:Vowels & Consonants
Count up the number of correct, incorrect and “I don’t know” answers for each contrast
2 or 4 items for each contrast
consonant contrasts could be in either initial or final position (marked on the results page)
If the majority of responsesfor that contrast areincorrect or “I don’t know”,then intervention maybe needed

Practice Activities:Vowels & Consonants
Raise Awareness & Build Confidence
Minimal Pair Sentences
Pronunciation Matters (Cards)
http://www.pronunciationmatters.com
Write sentences on cards, draw pictures on cards or on chalkboard
one person randomly readsone of the sentences in thepair, the learners points tothe correct card or picture
repeat until the learnerindicates the correct cardor picture every time

Diagnosing Problems:Word Stress

Diagnosing Problems:Word Stress
Count up the number of correct, incorrect and “I don’t know” answers
results page shows patterns:
o o O o (4 syllables, 3rd syllable is stressed)
o O (2 syllables, 2nd syllable is stressed)
o o O o o (5 syllables, 3rd syllable is stressed)
may notice more incorrect or “I don’t know” responses for a particular pattern

Practice Activities:Word Stress
Marking Stress
use a clear method (like big circle, little circle)
have students practice marking stress in dictations or while doing listening exercises
Focus on word stress in vocabulary
have students sort vocabularywords by stress patterns andsyllable patterns
discuss the word stress of newvocabulary words as theyare introduced

Diagnosing Problems:Intonation

Practice Activities:Intonation
Perception Practice
have someone say a sentence ending with either rising or falling intonation
student points to the sentence they heard
Production Practice
have student say a sentence withrising or falling intonation
teacher/tutor points to the onethey heard

Diagnosing Problems:Sentence Stress

Practice Activities:Sentence Stress
Perception Practice
have someone say the same sentence varying the stress
student points to the sentence they heard
Production Practice
limmericks (recordings)
sentences with unimportantwords missing

Questions?

References
Acton, W. (1984). Changing fossilized pronunciation. TESOL Quarterly, 18 (1), 71-85.
Catford, J.C. (1987). "Phonetics and the teaching of pronunciation", in Morley, J. (Ed.) Current perspectives on pronunciation: Practices anchored in theory. Washington D.C.: TESOL. pp. 83-100.
Cenoz, J. & Lecumberri, L. G. (1999). The effect of training on the discrimination of English vowels. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 36(4), 261-275.
Champagne-Muzar, C., Schneiderman, E. I., & Bourdages, J. S. (1993). Second language accent: The role of the pedagogical environment. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 31, 143-160.
Chan, C. (2001). The perception (and production) of English word-initial consonants by native speakers of Cantonese. Hong Kong Journal of Applied Linguistics, 6, 26-44.
Chun, D. M. (2002). Discourse intonation in L2: From theory and research to practice. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
de Bot, K. (1983). Visual feedback of intonation I: Effectiveness and induced practice behavior. Language and Speech, 26, 331-350.
Flege, J. E. & Eefting, W. (1987). Production and perception of English stops by native Spanish speakers. Journal of Phonetics, 15, 67-83.
Gilbert, J. (2005). Clear speech: Pronunciation and listening comprehension in North American English (3rd ed., Student’s Book). New York: Cambridge University Press.

References
Henrichsen, L., Green, B., Nishitani, A., & Bagley, C. (1999) Pronunciation matters: Communicative, story-based activities for mastering the sounds of North American English. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Ingram, J. C. L. & Park, S. G. (1997). Cross-language vowel perception and production by Japanese and Korean learners of English. Journal of Phonetics, 25, 343-370.
Mora, J. K. (1998). Teaching phonemic awareness & pronunciation with minimal contrast pairs. Retrieved March 7, 2006, from http://coe.sdsu.edu/people/jmora/MinimalPairsMMdl/Default.htm
Morely, J. (1991). The pronunciation component in teaching English to speakers of other languages. TESOL Quarterly, 25, 481-520.
Schneiderman, E., Bourdages, J., & Champagne, C. (1988). Second-language accent: The relationship between discrimination and perception in acquisition. Language Learning, 38, 1-19.
Shewell, J. (2004). Hearing the difference: A computer-based speech-perception diagnostic tool for non-native speakers of English. Unpublished masters thesis, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA.
Trofimovich, P. & Baker, W. (2006). Learning second language suprasegmentals: Effect of L2 experience on prosody and fluency characteristics of L2 speech. SSLA, 28, 1-30.
Zheng, Z. Z., Munhall, K. G., Johnsrude, I. S. (2009). Functional overlap between regions involved in speech perception and in monitoring one’s own voice during speech production. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 22(8), 1770-1781.

Examining the Link between Perception and Production: Practical Applications

by Justin Shewell on Mar 18, 2011

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