Teaching Pronunciation and Intonation with computer Technology

General pronunciation courseware.

As O’Brien (2006) observes, these kind of courseware mainly deal with single words or basic utterances but not learners’ own utterances is of the nature of listen and repeat. Though some of them provide recommendations for more native-like pronunciation, they don’t address individual student errors. Therefore, before recommending such courseware to my EFL students at tertiary level in China, I will guide students to do a self assessment of their pronunciation contour and help diagnose their segmental (vowels and consonants) and suprasegmental (stress, rhythm and intonation) errors that may impede intelligibility. Then I will direct them to select such tools that address their individual pronunciation problems.

Automatic speech recognition.

O’Brien notes that ASR software can be used to provide objective evaluation of learners’ pronunciation performance, and some, like Tell Me More, can provide limited contextual conversation and encourage more creative utterances than the simple answers allowed in basic courseware. Other advantages of ASR include its provision of a variety of different native speakers of the target language and assessment on the intelligibility of learner speech. However, learners can only receive the feedback that whether their pronunciation is native like or not, but no explanation of why.

I have difficulty using such techniques due to my students’ lack of knowledge of phonetics and phonology. But I am thinking of providing them such instructions, so that they can use the software to do self-evaluation since they then can understand why their pronunciation is not correct. So all they need to do is to recognize and modify their errors with the assistance of the software.

Visualization software.

Visualization techniques, according to O’Brien, can be effective for segmental and prosody correction through the use of visualization displays such as pitch contours, waveforms, spectrograms, and notations. However, I won’t feel confident and comfortable using such software in my class, for I totally have no idea about these visual displays and visualization feedback. A possible solution, as O’Brien suggests, is to receive extensive training in the interpretation of the various forms of visualization, so that I can use the software to design activities and my students will be able to do the diagnosis of their speech by themselves.

References

O'Brien, M. G. (2006). Teaching pronunciation and intonation with computer technology. In L. Ducate & N. Arnold (Eds). Calling on CALL: From theory and research to new directions in foreign language teaching (pp. 127-148). San Marcos, TX: CALICO.