Embodied pronunciation training : the benefits of visuospatial hand gestures
In the last few decades, the use of hand gestures that encode phonological features of the target language has been proven to play a positive role in L2 suprasegmental learning. However, less is known about the effects of embodied pronunciation training on the acquisition of novel segments. This doc...
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| Tipo de recurso: | tesis doctoral |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2021 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | CBUC, CESCA |
| Repositorio: | TDR. Tesis Doctorales en Red |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:www.tdx.cat:10803/672644 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10803/672644 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Gestures Hand movements Pronunciation Embodied cognition Second language acquisition Gestos Moviments manuals Pronúncia Cognició Corporeïtzada Adquisició de segones llengües Movimientos manuales Pronunciación Cognición corporeizada Adquisición de segundas lenguas 81 |
| Sumario: | In the last few decades, the use of hand gestures that encode phonological features of the target language has been proven to play a positive role in L2 suprasegmental learning. However, less is known about the effects of embodied pronunciation training on the acquisition of novel segments. This doctoral dissertation includes three between-subject studies which tested the effects of visuospatial hand movements as pedagogical gestures for training L2 pronunciation features. Study 1 demonstrated that producing durational gestures (i.e., horizontal hand movements to illustrate vowel-length contrasts) improves novice learners’ production of Japanese long vowels. Study 2 showed that appropriately performing gestures that mimic consonantal aspiration boosts the learning of Mandarin aspirated plosives by novice learners. Finally, study 3 revealed that the observation of hand gestures encoding melodic and rhythmic features of speech helps learners with elementary-to-inter-mediate French proficiency reduce their accentedness and improve their accuracy in producing the non-native front rounded vowels. Overall, the three studies show the benefits of embodied pronunciation training involving hand gestures that encode segmental and supraseg-mental phonological information. These results highlight the need to integrate embodied training methods in L2 classrooms and support the predictions of the Embodied Cognition paradigm for L2 phonological learning. |
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