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The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics
[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 23, No. 0, pp.1094-1110
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 30 Jan 2023
Received 23 Sep 2023 Revised 04 Nov 2023 Accepted 25 Nov 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.23..202311.1094

Prosodic Manifestations of L2 English Read Speech and Pronunciation Proficiency: Bridging the Gap between Research and Practice

In Young Yang
Assistant Professor, Dept. of English Education, Catholic Kwandong University, Tel: 033-649-7762 inyoung@cku.ac.kr


© 2023 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This study aims to explore ways of bridging the gap between pronunciation research and teaching practices by evaluating learners’ pronunciation proficiency through the assessment of the efficacy of two established pronunciation rating dimensions: nativelikeness and comprehensibility, with the goal of applying these dimensions in language classrooms. Speech samples from 35 Korean speakers of English were rated by 10 native English listeners in terms of pronunciation nativelikeness and comprehensibility. These samples were then analyzed for various prosodic speech characteristics, including prominence occurrence, pitch variation, pause occurrence, speech planning size, and speech rate. Subsequently, the speakers were clustered using k-means, and statistical tests were conducted using R to reveal the adequacy of evaluating learners’ pronunciation proficiency based on the two pronunciation rating dimensions. The results showed that each speech factor correlated with pronunciation ratings to varying degrees, with pitch variation being statistically insignificant. Speech planning size demonstrated a stronger correlation with comprehensibility than with pronunciation nativelikeness. Pronunciation proficiency levels clustered based on the two rating dimensions revealed distinctive speech characteristics among the clusters, suggesting the effective implementation of these dimensions in pronunciation teaching practice.

Keywords:

second language pronunciation, L2 prosody, comprehensibility, nativelikeness, pronunciation proficiency

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