3. INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
Purposes of the Study
Research Question
Definition of the Terms
Proposal Presentation 3
4. Background of the Study
A report recently released shows that the
proficiency of English of Taiwan adults is
ranked 30 and categorized into
“intermediate-low level”, falling behind
neighboring countries such as Japan and
Korea.
(Education First, 2012)
Proposal Presentation 4
5. Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this study is to evaluate
the effectiveness of computer-assisted
pronunciation training in English for
vocational college students in Taiwan,
evaluating the improvement of
pronunciation quality.
Proposal Presentation 5
6. Research Question
Are computer-assisted pronunciation
training tools effective in improving
pronunciation quality for vocational
college students?
Proposal Presentation 6
7. Definition of the Terms
CAPT = Computer Assisted Pronunciation
Training
CALL = Computer Assisted Language
Learning
Proposal Presentation 7
8. Literature Review
An important tenet of structural
linguistics was that the primary medium
of language is oral: Speech is language.
(Richards & Rodgers, 2001:p.55)
Proposal Presentation 8
9. Literature Review
The areas where CALL-based pedagogy outpaces
conventional materials are in the provision of:
individual plans
anywhere / anytime instruction
patient tutoring
a private space to make mistakes
immediate, individualized instruction
detailed records of achievement
self-paced learning.
(Nunan, 2011:p.216)
Proposal Presentation 9
10. Literature Review
Neri et al. (2008)
A CAPT system is used to teach a group of 11-year-old
native Italian children in English as a foreign language.
The improvement made by experimental group and
control group was comparable.
The time used by experimental group is half of control
group.
Teaching with CAPT helped experimental group
improve their pronunciation of difficult and unknown
words significantly.
Proposal Presentation 10
11. Literature Review
Hardison (2004)
A CAPT tool with automatic feedback of the speaker’s
intonation in form of filtered oscillograms on computer
screen is used.
Experimental results revealed significant effects of
computer-assisted training in the acquisition of second
laguage prosody and generalization to segmental
accuracy and novel sentences.
A real-time visual display received positive comments
from participants.
Proposal Presentation 11
13. Participants
Experimental
Control Group
Group
Second-year students in a vocational
Participants
university
Numbers 45 45
Ranked and listed according to
their averaged scores of first-year
General English courses
Sampling
Systematic sample with a random
start combined with stratification
from the middle 60%
Proposal Presentation 13
16. Procedures
Training
Pre-test Post-test
Procedure
Proposal Presentation 16
17. Training Procedure
Experimental
Control Group
Group
Teacher Taught by the same teacher
Syllabus Elementary level oral practice
Period One session per week for 12 weeks
Blended Traditional
teaching with teaching
CAPT 80 minutes per
Sampling 40 minutes session
teach-led
40 minutes
with CAPT
Proposal Presentation 17
18. Rating Procedure
The pronunciation quality of each utterance is scored on a 100-point scale.
S1 S2 S90
Sentence#1 Audio file #1
Sentence #2 Audio file #2
Sentence #50 Audio file #50
20. Pilot Study
Two small groups of students with similar
demographic background will be studied
in the pilot study.
Proposal Presentation 20
21. Statistical Analysis
Cronbach alpha test
On the scores given by three raters and MyET
To test the reliability of measurements
ANOVA (F-test)
On the pretest and posttest scores
To examine the difference of teaching effectiveness
between experimental groups and control groups
Proposal Presentation 21
