Thanks or tanks: training with tactile cues improves learners’ accuracy of English interdental consonants in an oral reading task

The present study investigates whether training second language pronunciation with tactile cues facilitates the production of non-native sounds involving accessible articulatory features. In a between-subjects experiment with a pretest-training-posttest design, 50 Turkish learners of English receive...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Ozakin, Alev Senem, Xi, Xiaotong, Li, Peng, Prieto Vives, Pilar, 1965-
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión aceptada para publicación
Fecha de publicación:2023
País:España
Institución:Varias* (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitáries de Catalunya, Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya)
Repositorio:Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunya
OAI Identifier:oai:recercat.cat:10230/57261
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10230/57261
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2022.2107522
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Llengua segona -- Adquisició
Descripción
Sumario:The present study investigates whether training second language pronunciation with tactile cues facilitates the production of non-native sounds involving accessible articulatory features. In a between-subjects experiment with a pretest-training-posttest design, 50 Turkish learners of English received audiovisual training on a set of target words and sentences containing two English interdental fricatives, /θ/ and /ð/, in one of two conditions, tactile and non-tactile. The tactile condition involved self-touching the tongue as it protruded during pronunciation of the two target sounds. Participants’ pronunciation performance was assessed through a word-imitation task, a sentence-imitation task, and a discourse reading task. Results showed that while both training conditions helped learners to improve their pronunciation performance in all three tasks, the tactile condition triggered greater improvements in the discourse reading task. These results extend previous findings on the benefits of tactile input for speech perception and suggest the efficacy of multisensory training paradigms for improving second language pronunciation.