**1. Introduction**

The increased interest in pronunciation teaching in the current era (Levis, 2019) has spurred a great expansion in the research base exploring effective practices (Levis, 2021a, 2022; Saito & Plonsky, 2019). The accumulation of research findings has made it possible to make generalisations about the positive effects of some approaches that have been researched, such as perception-oriented approaches (Sakai & Moorman, 2018), especially High Variability Phonetic Training – HVPT (Thomson, 2018), and approaches that address suprasegmental aspects of pronunciation (Lee et al, 2015). Notwithstanding these advances in our knowledge of approaches that work and the body of research supporting the value of teaching pronunciation (Derwing & Munro, 2015; Lee et al., 2015), the research base is still limited, and there is a vast territory for exploration and systematic study of the effectiveness of specific practices (Pennington, 2021). In what follows, I review the present state of research in the field and offer suggestions of areas that are ripe for further investigation by researchers as well as by teachers in their own classrooms, recommending action research as a way for the latter group to put research into practice.

**2. Limitations of the existing body of pronunciation research**

A critical examination of the existing body of pronunciation research reveals a number of limitations, including:

* restricted focus of the research;

* relatively weak research design;

* insufficient attention to methodological factors affecting research outcomes;

* lack of systematic replication and comparison across different conditions;

* limited attention to authentic language and language variety; and

* limited attention to authentic communication.

An examination of each of these limitations serves to delineate areas in need of attention in future research.

**2.1 Restricted focus of the research**

The bulk of pronunciation teaching research centres on remediating segmental errors in the speech of students who have been learning English for some time (Lee et al., 2015; Levis, 2021b; Saito & Plonsky, 2019; Thomson & Derwing, 2015). A focus on segmentals tends to mean a focus on error and accuracy that the field is aiming to move away from and towards a focus on intelligibility (Levis, 2018). The focus on segmentals has meant comparatively less attention paid to suprasegmentals, discourse, and social attributes of pronunciation. Micro-level features of pronunciation have been attended to at the expense of macro-level features related to intonation, rhythm, stress, and the accompanying substantial modifications of phonemes that occur through linking and coarticulation during running speech. Because of the focus of research on relatively advanced learners (Saito & Plonsky, 2019), methodologies for teaching pronunciation to beginners have hardly been explored. In addition, the published research has centred mainly on learners of English, with limited attention paid to pronunciation teaching for learners of other languages (Levis, 2021b; Pennington, 2021). More research is needed on pronunciation in context, on younger and early-stage learners, and on learners of languages other than English.
## 2.2 Relatively weak research design

Lee et al.'s (2015) discussion of their meta-analytical review points to weak research design and methodology as a problem in pronunciation research. Many studies showing positive findings need to be followed up by further studies exploring the same approaches with stronger designs in terms of methodology and research standards. Hardison (in press) lists all the features that characterise successful perception training for pronunciation suggesting the complexity and number of elements required to constitute a strong research design for successful auditory perception training:

1. compatible testing and training stimuli with verified intelligibility;

2. natural versus synthesised speech;

3. multiple exemplars of one or more target sounds in a range of phonetic environments to facilitate generalisation to new stimuli;

4. stimuli produced by multiple talkers (i.e., voices) to promote robust perceptual category development and generalisability;

5. an identification (vs. a discrimination) task;

6. relatively implicit training with feedback;

7. generalisation to improved perception of novel stimuli and unfamiliar voices;

8. transfer of skill to other tasks such as production in the absence of explicit production training;

9. retention of improved abilities.

Only a small percentage of perception studies incorporate all of these features, HVPT being the focus of most of them. As explained in Thomson (2018), HVPT methodology for perceptual enhancement has been shown to help learners revise their mental representations of L2 sounds with potential transfer to production of the sounds whose perception has been trained. In addition to HVPT, many different ways of training perception have proven effective, as shown in the studies reviewed by Sakai and Moorman (2018) and also the perception-oriented studies reviewed by Lee et al. (2015) and Saito and Plonsky (2019), but most of the studies reporting positive findings do not use the same methodology. Pronunciation teaching would benefit by more replications and comparative studies of different methodologies to establish the reliability and generalisability of the effects of various approaches to training perception in different contexts.

## 2.3 Insufficient attention to methodological factors affecting research outcomes

A problem with the advocacy of specific methods is that those methods may be implemented in different ways, with different effects. For example, a suprasegmental orientation for pronunciation can be as minimal as a focus on syllables rather than phonemes or as maximal as a focus on discourse intonation (Brazil, 1997; Brazil et al., 1980). In between these two extremes, it might focus on word stress, sentence stress, intonation, or phrase-level or sentence-level linking between words. It might also be oriented to perception or production, or both. And the methods for teaching suprasegmentals within any of these orientations vary widely. It would be of value to design studies to specifically test the effects of different aspects of suprasegmentals, and especially to compare the effectiveness of more micro-level (e.g., syllable- or word-level) vs. more macro-level (e.g., sentence- or discourse-level) approaches.
A recent computer-based study by Hirata (2024), for instance, found that in training pitch and durational contrasts for English learners of Japanese, sentence-level input was more effective than word-level.

Another example of variation in implementation of pronunciation teaching methodology is the technique of shadowing in which the learner aims to repeat exactly what they hear with as little delay as possible, almost simultaneously. Shadowing, which is based on stretches of running speech, has been shown in some research to improve intelligibility and other global aspects of pronunciation (Foote & McDonough, 2017; Hamada, 2019; Murphey, 2001). “Pure” shadowing is done using continuous stretches of speech that the learner has not been exposed to before (in either written or spoken versions). The shadowing technique can however be performed in many different ways that affect the task and its outcomes (Hamada, 2019; Murphey, 2001), and most studies include moderating factors without systematic examination of how they affect results. In any given case, shadowing may or may not include explicit instruction, analysis of the stretches of spoken language that are shadowed, and use of written versions of what is heard. It may also involve manipulations such as a reduced rate of speaking and/or shadowing in short stretches with pauses in between each stretch rather than continuously as speech is produced in longer stretches. Shadowing may be done “live,” that is, on speech as it is occurring, or based on an audio recording, which is the common way in teaching contexts as it allows the shadowed material to be accessed multiple times, as well as via computer delivery. The technique may be done through repeating either out loud or silently, and with exact or complete repetition or only selective repetition of some words and phrases (Murphey, 2001). Comparative research on the different methodological options for shadowing can help to tease out which features, or combinations of features, are most effective.

## 2.4 Lack of systematic replication and comparison across different conditions

A shortcoming related to the insufficient attention to methodological factors affecting research outcomes is the lack of systematic replication and comparison across different conditions, involving student populations, teaching contexts, pronunciation features focused on, and instructional or training methods. Nearly all studies have been carried out on just one class or with one group of learners (Lee et al., 2015; Saito & Plonsky, 2019), and only in a few areas of research – notably, perception studies (Sakai & Moorman, 2018) – have later studies been built on, and specifically compared to, the methodology of prior studies. HVPT is noteworthy in having carefully built a long line of related studies (Thomson, 2018) with some diversity across the studies in student populations, teaching contexts, and pronunciation features focused on – though the HVPT research has tended to focus on certain populations and teaching contexts and on a few segmental contrasts, using essentially the same approach for the training. The research on pronunciation teaching effectiveness can be strengthened by increased attention to comparative research and replication in new contexts.

## 2.5 Limited attention to authentic language and language variety

The limited attention paid to authentic language in teaching materials and methodologies is a major shortcoming of pronunciation practice and research (Saito & Plonsky, 2019). A long-practised tradition in pedagogy for teaching and learning to occur in a step-by-step sequence from simple and controlled to freer and more complex tasks can be seen in the mainstream approach to pronunciation teaching, particularly, in the form summarised in the Communicative Framework for Teaching Pronunciation (Celce-Murcia et al., 2010, pp. 44–48), which is often cited as the instructional sequence followed in pronunciation teaching
research (Saito & Plonsky, 2019). The approach involves a presentation phase of explicit teaching about spoken language forms and functions which may present samples of authentic

language – without student practice – but typically instead uses constructed examples designed to foreground a teaching point. This phase is followed by student practice in producing the focal forms and functions in controlled, guided, and then freer tasks involving “communicative” practice. It is only at this final stage that the pedagogy aims to elicit authentic language from the student.

Following the mainstream pedagogical tradition, pronunciation teaching has assumed the need, or the desirability, of simplifying language and tasks by limiting variety and context in order to keep cognitive load manageable and maintain focus on whatever aspect of pronunciation is being taught. The pronunciation teaching tradition has largely avoided authentic language on the assumption that it is too complex and variable for learners to handle in terms of managing cognitive load and attention. However, findings have been accumulating that more variety, context, and complexity of language and tasks can be handled by learners and can be helpful to their language learning. HVPT’s provision of a range of speaker models is a key feature of its effectiveness (Thomson, 2018), and complex tasks requiring complex language have been found to improve pronunciation and other aspects of language form in CLT and task-based instruction (Gordon, 2021; Mora & Levkina, 2018; Robinson, 2011), such as by eliciting more form-focused communicative episodes during negotiation of meaning (Long, 1991, 2015). Some recent research uses the authentic language in media such as television and films for teaching language; see, for example, Foote and McDonough’s (2017) use of TV sitcoms together with mobile media for teaching shadowing, Namaziandost et al.’s (2018) use of a popular series to teach prosody, and the review in Sánchez-Auñón et al. (2023) on use of films in teaching EFL. Pronunciation teaching and research can be enhanced by increasing the attention to authentic language from diverse contexts, speakers, and linguistic varieties.

## 2.6 Limited attention to authentic communication

Concomitant with the limited attention to authentic language is the limited attention to authentic communication, which has not usually been differentiated from authentic language, in teaching methods and materials and also in assessment. Traditional communicative pronunciation pedagogy can be challenged as not being truly communicative. It is “at best communicative in only the final stage [of lessons], and often not even then, as they do not quite achieve ‘free’ or spontaneous communication” (Pennington, 2021, p. 15). Even in its final-stage, freer tasks and contexts, CLT practice usually amounts to a simplified simulation, with some of the real constraints of communication factored out. Already back in the 1990s some educators were criticising CLT as not actually, or sufficiently, communicative. A main critic was Scott Thornbury at International House in Barcelona, who criticised the mainstream form in which CLT evolved as losing any real sense of communication. Thornbury (1996, p. 57) made a distinction between “small-c” and “capital-c” communicative language teaching activities, the former being interactive activities such as information gap tasks and other kinds of pair and group work that encouraged students to talk and the latter being activities that encouraged authentic communication based on students’ real lives and contexts. As to assessment of the results of teaching, Saito and Plonsky’s (2019) meta-analytical review makes clear that what has been counted as improvement has been largely restricted to non-communicative measures, including: 1) rough measures of individual features of pronunciation, rather than improvement of pronunciation by global measures such as comprehensibility; and 2) pronunciation judged in controlled tasks rather than free conversation or spontaneous speech.
## 3. Under-researched areas

Limitations in the existing body of pronunciation research can also be considered in terms of a number of under-researched areas:

* the linkage to gesture, facial expression, and the larger whole-body context of communication;

* stretches of speech;

* social meaning, affect, and identity;

* learners of different ages and proficiency levels; and

* use of technology.

A review of these shortcomings can point the way to future enrichment of the pronunciation research agenda.

### 3.1 The linkage to gesture, facial expression, and the larger whole-body context of communication

There is a close linkage of pronunciation to gesture and facial expression, forming a multimodal complex (Hardison, in press; Hardison & Pennington, 2021) that can usefully be taught together for mutual reinforcement. From a different perspective, LaScotte et al. (2021, 2023) build a case for teaching pronunciation in a whole-body context based on a social view of pronunciation as intimately linked to self-expression and identity. Their article and book both offer examples and guidelines for teaching according to a mirroring approach in which learners adopt the features of pronunciation and delivery involving gestures, face, and voice of a person whom they decide to use as their model speaker. Their research (LaScotte & Tarone, 2022) has shown that L2 speakers can significantly modify their pronunciation when they are enacting the voices of others and that their accent can shift significantly towards that of an imitated native speaker. In a related finding, Henderson and Rojczyk (2023) report on a foreign language imitation approach in which L1 French students transferred pronunciation patterns developed by imitating the foreign accents of L1 English speakers pronouncing French, resulting in significant improvement to their L2 English pronunciation. The positive findings of these two innovative approaches to pronunciation recommend them for further systematic study, and suggest that research should continue to explore and develop pronunciation pedagogy based on students imitating or mirroring speakers. In addition, these two studies showing that learners can change their pronunciation substantially when they are imitating other speakers recommend development of teaching methodology in which learners are encouraged to think of their pronunciation in terms of *styling* their speech rather than correcting it.

### 3.2 Stretches of speech

Segmentals may or may not be taught in context, but rather are often taught in isolation as minimal pair contrasts. The teaching of suprasegmentals, however, requires contextualised language: at a bare minimum, multisyllabic words for teaching stress; and longer stretches for teaching intonation, rhythm, and the articulatory effects of the alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables, such as linking, assimilation, and deletion. Research has shown that a teaching focus on suprasegmentals and stretches of speech (e.g., Gordon & Darcy, 2022;
Hirata, 2004; Lee et al., 2020) is more effective than a focus on individual phonemes. Multiclausal sequences are needed to showcase phonological devices for indicating the coherence across clauses, such as prosodic features for indicating the prominence of thematic items vs. the non-prominence of non-thematic items, or for demarcating thought groups. Even longer sequences can illustrate the features of suprasegmental phonology that indicate different types of discourse-level meaning, such as the prosodic features of oral narratives, descriptions, instructions, and explanations. Aspects of pronunciation that are manifested in stretches of speech involving linking and coarticulation, stress and intonation, rhythm, and fluency should receive more attention from the research community.

More attention to the teaching of oral language in context, from small continuous stretches of speech at the phrase level to whole discourses with a focus on pronunciation – as well as studies incorporating the facial expressions, gestures, and bodily movement that are coordinated with features of pronunciation to indicate idea units and emphasis (see Hardison, 2018) – will continue the transition of pronunciation teaching and assessment away from segmental accuracy and towards intelligibility. Teaching discourse-level features and the accompanying facial and bodily movements can thus help shift the focus of pronunciation teaching from correctness of form to speaking style (Eckert & Rickford, 2001) and effectiveness of delivery (LaScotte et al., 2023), that is, from *speaking correctly* to *performing effectively*. Attention to delivery and communicative effectiveness rather than correctness may make it possible for L2 speakers to incorporate more features of personality and identity in their performance and to be more listener-directed, more natural, and less self-conscious.

## 3.3 Social meaning, affect, and identity

The current focus on intelligibility is often a narrow one that does not factor in any of the broader functions of pronunciation, segmental as well as suprasegmental, in expressing pragmatic and social meaning. Although Levis (2018) incorporates all of these elements in his broad notion of intelligibility, this construct is usually operationalised in research by listeners’ word by word understanding of what the speaker has said. The suprasegmental level is important in forming first impressions and for framing and structuring all of communication (Levis & Moyer, 2014), and research has demonstrated its importance in L1–L1 and L2–L1 interactions. Suprasegmentals have not been studied much yet in L2–L2 interactions, where they have been shown to have the same functions and importance (in spite of claims to the contrary by Jenkins, 2000, 2002); see, for example, Sperti’s (2017) investigation of ELF prosody in a linguistically diverse immigrant context involving communication about legal matters.

Suprasegmental features of voice quality, pitch height and movement, loudness, and timing not only aid in expressing the content and structure of verbal information, but also are an indicator of a speaker’s affective state and attitude towards the audience (Wichmann et al., 2009). In addition, as a long tradition of studies on accent in social sciences and sociolinguistics attests (Edwards, 2009; Giles & Robinson, 1990; Lippi-Green, 2012; Robinson & Giles, 2001), both segmental and suprasegmental features affect listeners’ judgments of speaker characteristics:

> People judge each other, in part, by not only what they say but also how they speak, including accent and voice quality, the articulation of individual words and sounds, fluency and phrasing in running speech, and the contouring of pitch to convey different kinds of meaning and feeling. A person’s pronunciation in all of these dimensions is a rich and complex surface characteristic that listeners use to judge deeper level characteristics such as intelligence, education, and
social class as well as such qualities as friendliness, openness, and
trustworthiness, or their opposites. Features of pronunciation, especially outside
the context of any visual indicators (as when talking to someone on the phone),
may also be used by listeners to socially profile a person in terms of country of
origin, ethnicity, race, age, state of health, and gender. In addition to these global
judgements of a person's character and characteristics, pronunciation is crucial
to intelligibility and comprehensibility.... In these different ways, pronunciation
communicates many types of information tied to utterance meaning and speaker
identity. (Pennington, 2020, p. 225)

Derwing and Munro (2015) “[observe] that the social impact of speaking with an L2 accent is related to listeners’ attitudes, which often involve stereotyping” (p. 152). Thus, “pronunciation often has social consequences” (Levis, 2021a, p. 24) which learners need to “understand and gain control over” (p. 25). As Levis (2021a) observes, “there is no equivalent measure to functional load for suprasegmentals” (p. 26); there is, however, a “social load” carried by prosody. “Instead of being heard as right or wrong,” in Levis’ (2021a) view, “errors in suprasegmentals may give a listener a vague sense that the speaker is hard to listen to, or worse, that they are rude or distant” (p. 26). Negative social consequences may also result from mispronounced segmentals, when listeners judge L2 speakers as hard to listen to because of all the errors in their speech and/or because of certain types of errors that either interfere the most with intelligibility or are most negatively stereotyped for a certain L2 speaker group.

Considering these facts, it seems important to teach the prosodic and segmental features that express social meaning, such as the various social (as opposed to referential) meanings of falling vs. rising pitch (e.g., exclusion or dominance vs. inclusion or solidarity), and the ethnocultural and varietal significance of interdental fricatives vs. alveolar stops (e.g., in *this/that/the*) and of released vs. unreleased vs. glottalised medial and final /t/ – distinctions which carry little or no functional load but which carry a significant social load and are of regional significance (Pennington et al., 2011). Research on teaching the social meanings of pronunciation features will help to align the teaching of pronunciation with the social turn in SLA (Block, 2003) and the social view of language and language learning (Lantolf, 2000, 2011).

3.4 Learners of different ages and proficiency levels

Much of the field has been focused on university-level learners who desire and need pronunciation instruction because their pronunciation lags behind their other language skills. More research and development is needed on pronunciation techniques that are effective with young students learning a second language as well as early-stage adult language learners. Research that specifically compares teaching approaches for learners of different ages and proficiency levels is lacking, and pronunciation teaching would benefit by research comparing approaches for learners at different stages of language learning. This would help to determine which are the best practices for students at different educational levels – in addition to nonliterate adult learners – and for beginning, intermediate, and advanced proficiency groups.

Pronunciation teachers working with students of all ages and proficiency levels are encouraged to give a larger share of class time over to real communication and authentic language in teaching materials and approaches. Use of authentic language is possible at intermediate and advanced levels, both for the teacher to give instructions and feedback to students, which is common, and for the students to communicate with each other, which is less common – though teachers at these levels who try to implement a CLT approach aim to make it happen in constructed communicative tasks. Relatively rare are lessons organised around the
kind of communication which Thornbury (1996) labelled “capital-c Communicative” activity,
that is, communication about students’ real lives and context. Figuring out how to incorporate
authentic language and authentic communication into pronunciation lessons takes some
thought and creativity, and it is especially challenging to incorporate into lower level classes,
including with beginners. Levis (2022) offers several authentic language and communication
activities that address stress in short question-and-answer sequences and are suitable for
beginners: an ice-breaker (activity 1) and a second activity (activity 2) extending the ice-
breaker, with a following activity (activity 3) to have students spell out their names (pp. 55–
57).

The inclusion of authentic language and communication is especially important at the earliest stage of language learning, when the L2 phonological system is not yet established (Bassetti, 2024, p. 700). This is when L2 pronunciation targets can best be set in perception and activated in production to limit the negative effects of L1 transfer, or interference, that affect L2 pronunciation learning and make it resistant to change (Pennington & Rogerson-Revell, 2019; Yu & Odlin, 2016). To limit negative transfer effects at an early stage of language learning, it is advisable for teachers to make use of authentic language and communication while avoiding written language, which will trigger orthographic transfer effects. Bassetti’s (2024) research review makes clear that orthographic transfer effects, which have mainly been reported as negative (pp. 702–705), are much more significant for pronunciation than L2 researchers have realised, occurring even

...after minimal exposure to an orthographic form, and once established are resistant to lengthy naturalistic exposure, and possibly to teaching. They can affect all aspects of L2 speech processing, as the same [orthographically linked transfer effect] can be found in perception, production, awareness, and phonological and lexical learning, and reflected in spelling. (p. 709)

3.5 Use of technology

Use of available technologies for working on pronunciation would seem to be a “no-brainer,”
and there are an increasing number and types of options (e.g., as reviewed by Fouz-Gonzáles,
2025, forthcoming), from pronunciation-centred learning apps designed for practice on
individual phonemes to video, ChatGPT, and Automated Speech Recognition (ASR).
However, the choice of which ones to use, for what purposes, and how to implement them in
classwork or individual work outside of class is complex. The best ways to employ the existing
technologies are still being explored, and the research so far has not accumulated enough
findings to give definite directions for pedagogy. However, many promising uses of technology
are being investigated. For example, Mora and colleagues have been experimenting with a
variety of focus-on-form techniques that make use of technology with the aim of improving
the pronunciation of Spanish and Catalan university students. These include Mora and
Levkina’s (2018) study using computerised map tasks that require a focus on pronunciation
and studies examining the effects on pronunciation of watching video with a focus on phonetic
form or meaning and using captioned or uncaptioned video (e.g., Galimberti et al., 2023;
Wisniewska & Mora, 2020). Fouz-González (2017, 2019) has developed approaches for
teaching pronunciation using various types of technology, such as tweets and podcasts. These
studies aiming to improve pronunciation with Spanish and Catalan learners of English at two
Spanish universities can give ideas for further research to try out some of the same or similar
methodology in other contexts.
Technology greatly facilitates use of authentic language and communication in pronunciation teaching. Tools like Audacity and the editing functions available for YouTube videos can be used to design lessons built around authentic language. New research has investigated teaching language through media such as television and films (e.g., see review in Sánchez-Auñón et al., 2023, on the use of films in teaching EFL), and researchers are experimenting with ways to use the authentic language provided in video media as a basis for teaching pronunciation, such as the prosody-oriented research of Namaziandost et al. (2018) using authentic videos and Sardegna and Jarosz's (2023) incorporation of authentic examples of words and phrases produced by a wide range of different speakers, extracted by YouGlish from YouTube videos, to model stress in polysyllabic words. Although Rogerson-Revell (2021), among others, has pointed out difficulties with ASR, the systems continue to be improved and can be used by language learners in dictation (Evers & Chen, 2022; McCrocklin, 2019) to help students tune their pronunciation so that the ASR system recognises their intended message. In addition, as Fouz-Gonzáles (2025), points out, "current AI-powered chatbots such as Gemini allow learners to engage in spontaneous conversations while viewing a real-time transcript of what the system understands" (pp. 8–9). Media and AI offer a rich pool of learning and teaching resources that can be applied to pronunciation, and their capacity for enhancing and developing approaches that emphasise context, variety, and authentic language and communication presents exceptional potentials for research.

Approaches for training intonation and other prosodic features have long made use of computer-generated visuals (Pennington, 1989; Pennington & Ellis, 2000), and research has continued to find that computer-generated visual representation of suprasegmental features results in positive training effects (e.g., Hardison, 2004; Hirata, 2024). Some researchers have developed software that can mechanically manipulate prosodic features of an L2 speaker's voice to be closer to that of a model speaker (e.g., an L1 speaker or an expert L2 speaker). The L2 learner can then practise trying to match this "golden speaker" model, which in essence means imitating an improved version of their own voice. Ding et al. (2019) have designed a golden speaker builder<fnref n="1" /> which learners can access and use online, supported by research results showing improvement in comprehensibility and fluency. Continued research on ways to make use of computer-generated visualisations and modifications of speech in the teaching of pronunciation will be of value in expanding the body of practices using techniques that involve speaker imitation, mirroring, and shadowing.

## 4. Expanding the pronunciation teaching and research agenda

The research base on pronunciation teaching now includes not only a growing body of replications and comparative research on previously studied approaches, but also a growing body of studies trialling many kinds of innovative approaches whose positive findings can inspire and give direction to further research. Published studies moreover offer a rich store of practices that teachers can draw on in their own classrooms. However, the linkage from research results to classroom teaching is not a straightforward process, as my own investigations of Hong Kong English language teachers' attempts to adopt new teaching practices confirms (Pennington, 1996; Pennington & Cheung, 1995; Pennington & Richards, 1997). One way of strengthening this linkage is for teachers to draw on published teaching research to perform action research in their classrooms in order to systematically explore teaching approaches, both the "best practices" that have received the most research attention and those practices that have shown positive effects in initial studies. In this way, pronunciation

<footnote n="1">¹ The Golden Speaker Builder goldenspeaker.eng.iastate.edu/speech</footnote>
teachers can have confidence that what they teach is supported by their own classroom research, as they establish their own linkages between research and practice.

Action research is a type of applied research that has been recommended for language teachers and applied in second language contexts (Burns, 1999, 2005; Crookes, 1993; Edge, 2001; Nunan, 1990; Wallace, 1998). It involves *trial-evaluation-reflection-adjustment* cycles of: 1) trying out an intervention geared to a desired outcome or outcomes; 2) evaluating the effects and effectiveness of the intervention; 3) reflecting on the processes and results of the intervention, and then 4) adjusting actions to either continue on with the original intervention or to try out a different intervention aiming to achieve similar or better results. Teachers can pursue action research as a collaborative activity (Burns, 1999; Gordon, 2008), working together as research partners or groups to systematically investigate approaches for teaching pronunciation in their classes in a comparative way (see Pennington, forthcoming), by:

* planning and preparing together,

* deciding what pronunciation feature or features to focus on and how to assess them,

* taking notes and comparing how things are going on a regular basis, if possible, observing each other's classes to view the teaching-learning process, and

* assessing the effects on students' perception and production as well as on their motivation and attitudes to the approaches.

I encourage those who conduct research on pronunciation teaching to expand their horizons to aid the field in creating a richer and more diverse teaching and research agenda. There is a need especially for more comparative studies—such as those examining the effects of teaching pronunciation at different stages of language learning, in different teaching contexts, or using contrasting pedagogical approaches or the same approach but with different constraints or affordances. Pronunciation teaching with technology also remains a vast territory awaiting further exploration.

**5. Towards the future of pronunciation teaching and research**

In the current era, pronunciation teaching and research is transitioning beyond its traditional narrow and artificially constrained pedagogical focus to incorporate contextualised and authentic language and to enhance pedagogy through use of technology, media, and the internet. In addition to established research traditions, pronunciation teaching and research are rapidly developing new methodologies incorporating linguistic variety, discourse, and social context in innovative ways of teaching pronunciation with positive results. Future development of pronunciation teaching and research should attend to larger context features, including the complex of segmental and suprasegmental effects in stretches of speech and discourse of different kinds, the kinaesthetic accompaniments of speech, and the social dimensions of communication that shift teaching of pronunciation away from segmental errors and accent, and towards intelligibility, speaking style, and delivery. Researchers can assist in extending the research agenda by replicating and adapting the new methodologies in different contexts and for different student populations, as classroom teachers draw on the published research to try out new approaches in their classroom through action research. In this way, both researchers and teachers will be participating in building a future for pronunciation pedagogy that incorporates the richness of language and of the contexts in which it occurs.
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https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263120000029

## About the author

**Martha C. Pennington** (PhD Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania) is a Research Fellow at Birkbeck University of London in the School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication and is currently a Visiting Professor at the University of Reading in the Department of English Language and Applied Linguistics. Her books include *Phonology in English Language Teaching: An International Approach* (Longman, 1996), *The Power of CALL* (Athelstan, 1996), *Phonology in Context* (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), *English Pronunciation Teaching and Research: Contemporary Perspectives* (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, co-authored with Pamela Rogerson-Revell), and *The Pronunciation Book: A Teacher's Guide*, to appear in her series Applied Phonology and Pronunciation Teaching, which has recently been acquired from Equinox by the University of Toronto Press. She has also published widely in literacy, including *Why Reading Books Still Matters: The Power of Literature in Digital Times* (Routledge, 2018, co-authored with Robert P. Waxler), and in language education, including *Language Program Leadership in a Changing World: An Ecological Model* (De Gruyter Brill, 2010, co-authored with Barbara J. Hoekje), volume 1 in her series Innovation and Leadership in English Language Teaching.

Email: m.pennington@bbk.ac.uk
# Live or leave! Vowel quality and vowel length in the intelligibility of advanced Spanish-accented English

Mateusz Pietraszek

Complutense University of Madrid

## Abstract

Often characterised as short and long in both research and teaching practice (Cruttenden, 2008; Hancock, 2012, Walker, 2010), the KIT and FLEECE vowels are commonly confused by Spanish learners of English as their mother tongue lacks a similar distinction (RAE, 2011). Length is also traditionally insisted upon in instruction and even more recent intelligibility-based (Levis, 2005) approaches to international English (Jenkins, 2000; Walker, 2010) advocate its importance prioritising it over vowel quality. The goal of this paper is to examine the role of vowel length and quality in Spanish-accented English from a quantitative and qualitative exploratory perspective. Sixty advanced English speakers with L1 Spanish were recorded and the acoustic properties of their FLEECE and KIT vowels were analysed in the words *live* and *leave*. The overall intelligibility (Kang et al., 2018; Wang, 2007), comprehensibility, and foreign-accentedness (Derwing & Munro, 1997, 2015) of the participants’ speech were assessed online by an international sample of 330 listeners from 28 L1 backgrounds. No association was detected between the overall pronunciation scores and vowel length. However, some evidence suggested that distinguishing at least one formant might be associated with increased comprehensibility and decreased accentedness. Additionally, the analysis of phonological intelligibility breakdowns showed that these could only be explained with a reference to formant values but not length distinctions. Thus, it is argued that vowel length in KIT and FLEECE may be disregarded and the focus in receptive and productive instruction should be on quality distinctions.

**Keywords:** accentedness, intelligibility, vowel length, vowel quality

<figure><img src="image_23.png" /></figure>
# 1. Introduction

The English FLEECE /i:/ and KIT /i/ vowels are most often characterised as long and short segments in both dictionaries and learning materials for L2 English students (Cruttenden, 2008; Hancock, 2012; Wells, 2008), especially – but not exclusively – those teaching British English. In educational contexts, this might lead to the conclusion that contrasting these vowels mainly based on length is sufficient in order to tease them apart, as isolated drills very often focus on length as the most integral feature to be trained when contrasting those vowels (see Mompeán-González, 2001). However, this simplistic assumption poses several problems aggravated by the very fact that vowel length is a relative phenomenon. Firstly, the FLEECE and KIT vowels have different articulations regardless of their length, the latter being both more open and back than the former.<fnref n="1" /> Secondly, analyses of Standard Southern British English (Lindsey, 2019; Wells, 1982) and General American (Celce Murcia et al., 2010) tend to describe the FLEECE vowel as a diphthong [ij], which glides from a more open and centralised articulation towards a higher and fronter point of articulation. Thirdly, vowel length in English is context-dependent (Ladefoged, 2001; Odden, 2011) and it is commonly used as a cue regarding the voicing of the following consonant (Rojczyk, 2010) or even the preceding consonant (Viswanathan et al., 2020) by native speakers of English. As a result of pre-fortis clipping (Roach, 2009), long vowels may even be pronounced shorter than short vowels, e.g., when comparing a long vowel before a voiceless stop with a short vowel before a long one. Length also varies depending on the number of syllables in a word (Ladefoged, 2001), hence the first syllable of *reading* will be shorter than the word *read* in the same context. Finally, perceptual studies suggest length is insufficient when distinguishing vowel qualities among native speakers (Hillenbrand, 1995; Liu et al, 2014).

It is therefore evident that vowels are never distinguished by length alone in English, and the descriptions of some varieties of English – including the most widely spoken, General American – make no reference to length as a relevant vowel feature (see Avery & Ehrlich, 1992). However, even relatively recent teaching recommendations – in all likelihood encouraged by canonical phonemic transcription in dictionaries (Wells, 2008) – insist on preserving length contrasts. Not only do they posit length as a feature necessary for internationally intelligible English, but they may even prioritise it over quality distinctions. This is the case, for example, of the Lingua Franca Core of features necessary for international communication in English as a global language (Jenkins, 2000, 2002; Walker, 2010). However, many languages do not have phonological length distinctions whereas all languages, including English and Spanish, distinguish between vowel qualities, which might be sufficient for basic vowel distinctions in English as an international language. In the particular case of Spanish, although vowel length differences exist in the language (Marín Gálvez, 1994), their phonological functions are not comparable to those in English (Fox et al., 1995). This feature, coupled with the fact that Spanish only has one high front vowel /i/, indeed poses pronunciation problems for L1-Spanish speakers of English (Finch & Ortiz Lira, 1982; Gómez-González & Sánchez-Roura 2016; Hancock, 2012; Walker, 2010). Previous studies have shown that, unlike English native speakers, Spanish speakers are largely insensitive to length differences (Fox et al., 1995; Viswanathan et al., 2020) or that their sensitivity to duration is lower than that of native speakers (Kondaurova & Francis, 2008). Other evidence suggests that instruction practices may lead Spanish speakers to rely on length even more than native speakers do in discrimination tasks (Mompeán-González, 2001). Finally, regarding international

<footnote n="1">¹ See Durand (2005) for a comprehensive summary of the debate on the relevance of vowel length and quality in English phonology.</footnote>
intelligibility, the evidence in support of length distinctions to preserve intelligibility has so far
been scarce and inconclusive (Jurado-Bravo, 2018).

**1.1 Aims and research questions**

The main goal of this exploratory study is to examine the utility of insisting on length versus quality distinctions in teaching the FLEECE : KIT contrast in Peninsular Spanish, applying the intelligibility principle (Levis, 2005) in English as an international lingua franca (Jenkins, 2000). With this aim in mind, the following research questions (RQ) will be addressed:

RQ1: Do Spanish speakers of English in the sample produce the FLEECE and KIT vowels with different length and/or quality?

RQ2: Is a contrast between FLEECE and KIT in L2 English associated with improved general pronunciation performance scores?

RQ3: What phonological intelligibility breakdowns may occur when FLEECE and KIT vowels are mispronounced?

**2. Methodology**

**2.1 Participants, recordings, and scoring**

This mixed-methods (Creswell et al., 2008) exploratory study is part of a broader research project (Pietraszek, 2024a, Pietraszek, 2024b). The sample consisted of 60 university students (26 females and 34 males; aged 19–26, M = 21.2) majoring in disciplines unrelated to linguistics and having B2–C2 levels of English proficiency. The speakers were recorded using a set of semantically unpredictable sentences (SUS) (Benoît et al., 1996; Pietraszek, 2024a) and an elicitation paragraph (Pietraszek, 2024b). SUS were selected as the best instrument to test phonemic intelligibility, because most semantic information is eliminated (Benoît et al., 1996; Kang et al., 2018). Subsequently, 330 international listeners with 28 different L1s evaluated the speakers’ comprehensibility and foreign-accentedness, and transcribed their SUS for intelligibility measurements. The *comprehensibility* (COM) and *foreign-accentedness* (FA) (Derwing & Munro, 1997, 2015) scores are averaged ratings the speakers received from the listeners on a 1–6 semantic differential scale using excerpts from the paragraph (Pietraszek, 2024b). *Intelligibility* (INT) was operationalised as phonological utterance decoding at the segmental level (cf. Jenkins, 2000; Kang et al., 2018). Thus, the INT score was calculated as a mean score based on the number of words correctly interpreted by the listeners in the test following a specially designed protocol (Pietraszek, 2024a). Similarly, the qualitative part of the study, i.e., intelligibility breakdown analysis, is based on listener transcriptions of SUS in the online test (Pietraszek, 2024a).

**2.2 Acoustic analyses**

The acoustic analyses are based on two words extracted from two syntactically comparable
SUS: *live* for the KIT vowel and *leave* for the FLEECE vowel. The vowel length of the LIVE and
LEAVE vowels was measured for each speaker using Praat (Boersma & Weenink, 2019). As
“the lengths of segments depend on their position in the word, their position in the phrase and
the whole utterance, where the stresses occur in the utterance, and many other factors”
(Ladefoged, 2003, p. 102), in order for the measurements to be comparable, the instances were
taken from SUS number 3 and 4 in series 3 for the minimal pair *leave–live*, i.e., *Leave the sport*
*and the thought* and *Live the sport and the fund*. The fact that the vowels came from two
consecutive sentences ensured a relatively stable pace of speech per speaker. Additionally, the syntactic position of both words was the same, in order to minimise contextual, phonotactic influence on vowel length. The exact procedure and the selection of starting and ending points in length measurements was particularly important owing to the phonological context of the targeted vowels. These were situated between a lateral approximant and a fricative, whose boundaries are more fluid than those of plosives, for example, as both laterals and fricatives are closer to vowels on the sonority scale (see Cruttenden, 2008). The boundaries were set using a spectrogram (see Figure 1) showing the intensity of vowel formants. The length was extracted using the accompanying waveform (see Figure 2) by selecting the first valley and the

<caption>**Figure 1**</caption>

*Spectrogram for /li:v/*

<figure><img src="image_24.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2**</figcaption></figure>

*Oscillogram for /li:v/*

<figure><img src="image_25.png" /></figure>
last peak corresponding to the points previously established on the spectrogram. The beginning and the end of the vowel were established at the boundaries of the area where F1 and F2 remained relatively stable. The values of F1 and F2 were registered for each vowel, except for one speaker for whom it was impossible to establish F2 values in a reliable fashion using Praat.

Given the potential inter-speaker differences, the variation in length was calculated as individual ratios of long to short vowel. The break-off point for considering the existence of a length distinction was a long-to-short vowel duration ratio of 1.25 (i.e., a long vowel, which is at least 25% longer than its short counterpart). The ratio was based on previous studies of British and American English, in particular, Cruttenden's (2008, p. 95) figures return a 1.85 ratio, similar to Wells' (1962) 1.9 average ratio. However, some studies of US English report much smaller differences (ratios), e.g., 1.23 in Liu et al. (2014, p. 243) and 1.28 in Hillenbrand et al. (1995, p. 3103). Given that research suggests that native speakers of General American may present truly short length differences in their vowels, a conservatively small ratio was chosen for this study as it would be unreasonable to set the bar higher for international English speakers than for native speakers.

Similarly, the differences in F1 and F2 were calculated for every speaker. Significant formant difference values were established at 70 Hz for F1 and 300 Hz for F2 upon consulting mean differences in formant measurements presented in Cruttenden (2008) (for RP), Ferragne and Pellegrino (2010) for Standard Southern English, London, and Hillenbrand et al. (1995) for General American English (see Table 1). The mean difference in F1 (at 82 Hz) and F2 (at 381 Hz) was considered alongside the minimum registered values. As in the case of length, it would not be reasonable to require international English speakers to produce contrasts larger than those of NSs.

<caption>**Table 1**</caption>

*F1 and F2 Values and Differences in FLEECE and KIT (in Hertz)*

<table><thead><tr><th>Study</th><th>Vowel</th><th>F1</th><th>F2</th><th>DIFFERENCE</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td rowspan="2">Cruttenden 2008<br>British English (RP)</td><td>FLEECE</td><td><i>M</i> 280<br><i>F</i> 303</td><td><i>M</i> 2249<br><i>F</i> 2654</td><td>F1 <i>M</i> 87<br><i>F</i> 81</td></tr><tr><td>KIT</td><td><i>M</i> 367<br><i>F</i> 384</td><td><i>M</i> 1757<br><i>F</i> 2174</td><td>F2 <i>M</i> 492<br><i>F</i> 480</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2">Ferragne & Pellegrino<br>2010<br>Standard Southern<br>English (SSE)</td><td>FLEECE</td><td>273</td><td>2289</td><td>F1 113</td></tr><tr><td>KIT</td><td>386</td><td>2038</td><td>F2 251</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2">Hildebrand et al 1995<br>General American<br>(GenAm)</td><td>FLEECE</td><td><i>M</i> 342<br><i>F</i> 437</td><td><i>M</i> 2322<br><i>F</i> 2761</td><td>F1 <i>M</i> 85<br><i>F</i> 46</td></tr><tr><td>KIT</td><td><i>M</i> 427<br><i>F</i> 483</td><td><i>M</i> 2034<br><i>F</i> 2365</td><td>F2 <i>M</i> 288<br><i>F</i> 396</td></tr></tbody></table>

*Note.* *M* = Male, *F* = Female
# 3. Results and discussion

## 3.1 Exploratory quantitative analysis

The results presented in this section address research questions 1 (RQ1) and 2 (RQ2). As previously mentioned, due to speech rate differences, what was deemed relevant was the relative difference in the length of the two vowels in two, consecutive SUS for each speaker and not the absolute length values in milliseconds (see Hisagi et al., 2024; Peterson & Lehiste, 1960; Wells, 1962). The absolute values and the ratios are shown in Figure 3 below. The data show that the length of KIT was slightly shorter than that of FLEECE. This difference was also statistically significant ($t(58) = 2.365, p = .022$). However, the effect size ($d = .226$) was very small reaching non-existent sensu Cohen (1988)<fnref n="2" />. More importantly, 71% of the speakers did not produce length distinctions.

<caption>**Figure 3**</caption>

FLEECE and KIT Vowel Length

<figure><img src="image_26.png" /></figure>

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th>N</th><th>Min</th><th>Max</th><th>Mean</th><th>SD</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>/i:/</td><td>59</td><td>27 ms</td><td>141 ms</td><td>79 ms</td><td>23 ms</td></tr><tr><td>/ɪ/</td><td>59</td><td>25 ms</td><td>150 ms</td><td>73 ms</td><td>22 ms</td></tr><tr><td>Long : Short Ratio</td><td>59</td><td>.46</td><td>2.3</td><td>1.15</td><td>0.46</td></tr></tbody></table>

Regarding vowel quality, the data in Figure 4 show that the mean formant values for both vowels were similar. Although paired sample *t*-tests show significant differences for F1 ($t(58) = -3.375, p = .001, d = -.339$) and for F2 ($t(57) = 2.452, p = .017, d = .171$) between the two

<footnote n="2">² d < .2 NO EFFECT; d ≥ .2 SMALL EFFECT; d ≥ .5 MEDIUM EFFECT; d ≥ .8 LARGE EFFECT.</footnote>
vowels, the effect sizes are fairly small in the case of F1, and below the threshold of any noticeable difference for F2 (Cohen, 1988).

<caption>Figure 4</caption>

FLEECE and KIT Vowel Formants (F1 and F2)

<figure><img src="image_27.png" /></figure>

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th></th><th>N</th><th>Min</th><th>Max</th><th>M</th><th>SD</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td rowspan="2">F1</td><td>/i:/</td><td>59</td><td>224</td><td>491</td><td>333</td><td>51</td></tr><tr><td>/ɪ/</td><td>59</td><td>258</td><td>509</td><td>357</td><td>51</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2">F1 difference<br>KIT-FLEECE</td><td></td><td>59</td><td>-87</td><td>240</td><td>24</td><td>55</td></tr><tr><td>/i:/</td><td>58</td><td>1644</td><td>2712</td><td>2163</td><td>254</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2">F2</td><td>/i:/</td><td>58</td><td>1604</td><td>2680</td><td>2100</td><td>264</td></tr><tr><td>/ɪ/</td><td>58</td><td>-622</td><td>629</td><td>63</td><td>194</td></tr><tr><td colspan="2">F2 difference<br>FLEECE-KIT</td><td>58</td><td>-622</td><td>629</td><td>63</td><td>194</td></tr></tbody></table>

F1 was different in seven students out of 59 (12%), while F2 was distinguished by five out of 58 (8.6%). However, only four out of 58 speakers (6.9%) distinguished both. Hence, the data reveal that the majority of the sampled speakers did not make length or quality distinctions when producing the FLEECE and KIT vowels (RQ1).

With regard to RQ2, no differences were detected in the pronunciation performance scores between those who did and did not make length distinctions.<fnref n="3" /> Similarly, no significant correlations were found between the FLEECE-to-KIT length ratio and the variables of COM/FA/INT.<fnref n="4" />

<footnote n="3">³ COM *t*(57) = -.199, *p* = .843; FA *t*(57) = .811, *p* = .421; INT *t*(57) = -.677, *p* = .101.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴ Correlations between length ratio and (a) COM: *r* = .056, *p* = .675, (b) FA: *r* = -.122, *p* = .359, (c) INT: *r* = -.171, (b) *p* = .195.</footnote>
In the case of quality, as very few students actually presented formant distinctions meeting the pre-established – already fairly lenient – criteria, in order to determine whether there was any association between the overall pronunciation performance and vowel quality, participants were split into two groups: those who make a distinction in at least one formant (n = 9) and those who do not distinguish any of them (n = 49). Subsequently, tests were carried out to detect potential differences between group A (at least one formant different) and group B (no quality distinction).

The results showed that group A (M = 4.8, Mdn = 5, SD = .5) was more comprehensible than group B (M = 3.93, Mdn = 4.07, SD = 6.67), U = 395, r = .45, p = .001. Similarly, group A (M = 3.08, Mdn = 3.29, SD = .79) was less accented than group B (M = 4.31, Mdn = 4.35, SD = .74), U = 44, r = -.50, p = .001. However, there were no significant differences in intelligibility, U = 304, p = .096. These findings indicate that those who make a noticeable distinction between the two vowels are evaluated as subjectively less accented and more comprehensible. This certainly reflects the influence of other pronunciation features, as the COM-FA-INT measures are general ratings. However, the results indicate that the speakers who are rated more favourably are more likely to make formant distinctions, but not necessarily length distinctions.

## 3.2 Qualitative analysis of intelligibility breakdowns

The data presented in Table 3 answer RQ3, showcasing what potential intelligibility breakdowns may occur when the FLEECE and KIT phonemes are mispronounced and how they may be interpreted as a result. Table 2 below presents all the cases where there were noticeable divergences in the interpretations given by the listeners on the test or between the intended speaker output and listener input. We can see that the listeners had to rely mainly on qualitative information due to the apparent lack of length differences. Similarly, diphthongal [ij] pronunciations of the FLEECE vowel were not detected in the Spanish-accented sample. Although it is difficult to detect a clear pattern, what is certain is that in most cases, the problematic vowel was the lax vowel /i/ in *live* or *list* when pronounced as [i] (e.g., in S20), which was normally interpreted as /i:/.

Yet a correct lax pronunciation did not always guarantee correct understanding as it was still misinterpreted by half of the listeners in S40 and 64% in S30. In almost all cases, except for S29, the interpretation was in favour of /i:/ regardless of the actual input. As no length distinctions were detected and most vowels in the corpus were short, given that /i/ is in fact a short vowel and it was still interpreted as the long /i:/, length does not seem to be the decisive factor for the international listeners; the latter favour vowel quality with a certain preference for /i:/ when in doubt. Previous research has shown that increased length may, paradoxically, also lead to a higher number of wrong interpretations of the FLEECE vowel (Jurado-Bravo, 2018).

Concerning the contrast between /i/ (the KIT vowel) and /i:/ (the FLEECE vowel), it sometimes proved difficult to determine which vowel was pronounced and thus the transcriptions in Table 3 should not be considered absolutely reliable although they were computer assisted. Depending on the dialect, there may also exist at least some overlapping between the exact formants of both vowels, considering the tense quality of the vowel /i/ in Australian English or the fact that /i:/ is commonly diphthongised to [ij], [ii] or even [i:j] (Wells, 1982, pp. 127, 140). Post-hoc acoustic analyses compared the formants in two sets of words: 1) S30, S40, S20, and 2) S29 vs S59 from Table 3. Additionally, a pair of control items were chosen from the corpus and S20 for *live*, S09 for *list*. Length was also measured yet none of the speakers in question made significant length distinctions and thus, it will not be discussed here.
<caption>Table 2</caption>

KIT vowel /i/ and FLEECE Vowel /i:/ – Intelligibility Breakdowns

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th colspan="2">live [liv]</th><th colspan="2">leave [liv]</th><th colspan="2">list [list]</th></tr><tr><th></th><th>interpreted<br>as:</th><th>n</th><th>%</th><th>interpreted<br>as:</th><th>n</th><th>%</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td></td><td>/i:/ leave</td><td>42</td><td>98</td><td>/i:/ leave</td><td>21</td><td>78</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>/i/ live</td><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>/i/ live, this</td><td>6</td><td>22</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Total</td><td>43</td><td>100</td><td>Total</td><td>27</td><td>100</td></tr><tr><td></td><td colspan="2">S20 Live the sport and the fund.</td><td colspan="2">S23 Leave the sport and the thought.</td><td colspan="2">S29 Stop the stock and the list.</td></tr></tbody></table><table><thead><tr><th></th><th colspan="2">live [lif]</th><th colspan="2">leave [l1:d]</th><th colspan="2">live [liv]</th></tr><tr><th></th><th>interpreted<br>as:</th><th>n</th><th>%</th><th>interpreted<br>as:</th><th>n</th><th>%</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td></td><td>/i:/ leave</td><td>23</td><td>64</td><td>/i:/ leave</td><td>18</td><td>75</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>/i/ live</td><td>13</td><td>36</td><td>/i/ live, this</td><td>3</td><td>12.5</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Total</td><td>36</td><td>100</td><td>/e1/ laid,<br>late</td><td>3</td><td>12.5</td></tr><tr><td></td><td colspan="2">S30 Live the sport and the fund.</td><td colspan="2">S33 Leave the sport and the thought.</td><td colspan="2">S40 Live the sport and the fund.</td></tr></tbody></table><table><thead><tr><th></th><th colspan="2">live [lif]</th><th colspan="2">list [list]</th><th colspan="2">live [liv]</th></tr><tr><th></th><th>interpreted<br>as:</th><th>n</th><th>%</th><th>interpreted<br>as:</th><th>n</th><th>%</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td></td><td>/i:/ leave</td><td>17</td><td>85</td><td>/i:/ list</td><td>14</td><td>61</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>/i/ live</td><td>3</td><td>15</td><td>/i/ least</td><td>9</td><td>39</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Total</td><td>20</td><td>100</td><td>Total</td><td>23</td><td>100</td></tr><tr><td></td><td colspan="2">S50 Live the sport and the fund.</td><td colspan="2">S59 Stop the stock and the list.</td><td colspan="2">S60 Live the sport and the fund.</td></tr></tbody></table>
<table><caption>**Table 3**</caption><caption>Formant Values for the KIT Vowel</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>F1</th><th>F2</th><th>F2-F1</th><th>interpreted<br>as /i/</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>S30 <i>live</i></td><td>331</td><td>1737</td><td>1406</td><td>36%</td></tr><tr><td>S40 <i>live</i></td><td>364</td><td>2179</td><td>1815</td><td>50%</td></tr><tr><td>S20 <i>live</i></td><td>336</td><td>2574</td><td>2238</td><td>2%</td></tr><tr><td>* S10 <i>live</i></td><td>438</td><td>2358</td><td>1920</td><td>40%</td></tr><tr><td>S29 <i>list</i></td><td>343</td><td>1855</td><td>1512</td><td>69%</td></tr><tr><td>S59 <i>list</i></td><td>347</td><td>2165</td><td>1818</td><td>39%</td></tr><tr><td>* S09 <i>list</i></td><td>421</td><td>2221</td><td>1800</td><td>90%</td></tr></tbody></table>

*Note. * = control items

Although the control items clearly have higher F1 values (suggesting a vowel more open than /i:/), only the vowel in *list* (S09) was actually interpreted correctly by most people. Thus, the table shows no observable patterns between the interpretations and the phonetic input at the formant level. One tentative explanation for better recognition of the vowel in *list* (S09) than the one in *live* (S10) is, again, the syntactic and lexical information. The latter is less likely to bear a direct object than the other member of the minimal pair *live-leave*, both of whose members are high-frequency verbs. Similarly, the correct interpretation of *list* may be due to the fact that a noun is much more likely to appear after the determiner *the* than the adverb or adjective *least*. The other analysed items seem to be harder to interpret, but there seems to be at least some evidence that higher F1 values (more than 400 Hz, indicating a more open vowel) were more often interpreted as /i/, although they may also have been repaired to /i:/ due to the limited, yet present, contextual information. On the other hand, a very high F2 (over 2500 Hz suggesting a more fronted vowel) was almost exclusively heard as /i:/ in conjunction with a low F1 value (S20) and a large F2-F1 difference (over 2200 Hz). This was not the case, however, when the F1 value was low but the F2 was not high enough (S30, S40, S29, S59), in which case /i/ was commonly interpreted as the vowel in *FLEECE*, although not always by the majority.

**4. Conclusions**

Most Spanish speakers in the sample made no length distinctions although they are likely to have been exposed to relevant pedagogical materials, for example minimal-pair length drills. Similarly, most of the speakers made no quality distinctions, often conflating the two phonemes. Although length distinctions were more prevalent in the sample than quality differences, it was the latter which were associated with better overall pronunciation performance scores suggesting that quality distinctions are a feature of more comprehensible, intelligible, and less accented speech. Most intelligibility breakdowns occurred because of substituting the *FLEECE* vowel for the one in *KIT*. The limited evidence also suggests that acoustic information regarding both F1 and F2 was used alongside the syntactic context provided by the SUS and that the vowel in *FLEECE* might be favoured even when *KIT* is pronounced.
While this exploratory research cannot reliably answer the question of whether length plays a role in international English intelligibility, it provides some evidence that changing the quality of a vowel may lead to misunderstandings. Thus, dismissing vowel quality as a core international English feature while insisting on length seems unfounded and therefore risky. It also places an additional burden on the learners who are asked to develop a phonological vowel category foreign to their linguistic system, while their target language uses it mainly as a marker of final consonant voicing. Thus, it seems reasonable, as a pedagogical implication of the results presented in this study, to raise learners' awareness of the varying duration due to fortis clipping regardless of the exact vowel quality, rather than to treat duration as the most relevant distinctive feature of the FLEECE and KIT phonemes.

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**About the author**

Mateusz Pietraszek is an Assistant Professor at the Complutense University of Madrid. He holds a PhD in English Linguistics and an MA in Spanish Linguistics. He has been teaching English for Specific Purposes, General English, and English Phonetics and Phonology at the university level for 16 years. His research interests include English and Spanish phonetics (intelligibility, accent, and attitudes to pronunciation), English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), comparative morphosyntax, English-medium instruction (EMI), and higher education. A passionate language learner, he speaks seven languages (English, Spanish, Polish, French, Catalan, German, and Esperanto) and is a member of the International Hyperpolyglot Association (HYPIA).

Email: mpietras@ucm.es
Rasmussen, S. H. (2025). Word-initial voicing in L2 English: Evaluations of /z/ productions before and after perceptual training. In A. Kirkova-Naskova, P. Humánez-Berral, & A. Henderson (Eds.), *Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on English Pronunciation: Issues and Practices* (pp. 84–96). Université Grenoble-Alpes. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16737662

# Word-initial voicing in L2 English: Evaluations of /z/ productions before and after perceptual training

Sidsel Holm Rasmussen

Aarhus University

## Abstract

This study examines the effect of perceptual training on the production of syllable onset L2 English /z/. L1 Danish participants' productions of English /z/ and /s/ were evaluated in terms of intelligibility, defined as the ability of native English listeners to correctly identify the intended phone in a Two-Alternative Forced-Choice task. Overall, the training group was more intelligible than the control group. After training, trainees' /z/ productions were identified with 61.3% accuracy (gain score of 12 percentage points), whereas the gain score for the control group averaged 4.5 percentage points (from 52.9% to 57.4%). Acoustic measurements were examined from the trainees whose /z/ tokens improved the most after training. Comparison between the two types of evaluations suggests that native listeners' identification of the English voiced alveolar sibilant corresponds to a greater percentage (≥ 25%) of periodicity in the fricative. Methodological considerations concerning different types of production evaluations are discussed.

**Keywords:** English sibilants, evaluation methods, foreign accent, fricative voicing, L2 phonetic training, perception and production

<figure><img src="image_28.png" /></figure>

This chapter is based on the oral presentation given by the author at the 8th International Conference on English Pronunciation: Issues and Practices (EPIP 8) held May 8–10, 2024 at the University of Cantabria in Santander, Spain. It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of the license, please go to: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
# 1. Introduction

A number of recent review papers delve into High Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT) as a widely used method for efficiently facilitating the acquisition of novel speech sounds (Barriuso & Hayes-Harb, 2018; Thomson, 2018). This line of research has a long tradition, with early studies demonstrating that exposure to several exemplars of the English /r – l/ contrast improved L1 Japanese listeners’ perception of the non-native speech sounds (Logan et al., 1991; Pisoni et al., 1994). Furthermore, the effects of perception training on L1 Japanese participants’ production of these English consonants were explored using different methods of evaluations which demonstrated that learning (for some trainees) led to improved productions (Bradlow et al., 1997). Meta-reviews have further scrutinised this potential for L2 perception training to lead to improvements in L2 production, and find that small-to-medium production gains are reported in the literature (Sakai & Moorman, 2018; Uchihara et al., 2024). Despite the wide range of results in studies examining the proposed link between perception and production in non-native speech learning, as well as the fact that the two modalities are now generally considered to be co-evolving in a bidirectional manner (Flege & Bohn, 2021), HVPT seems to offer a useful method for learners to receive targeted exposure to specific non-native contrasts. This paper provides results from some of the findings from an HVPT experiment, exploring the efficacy of perception training on L1 Danish participants’ production of English /z/.

## 1.1 L2 perception and production of English /s/ and /z/

The pair of English alveolar sibilants is known to cause problems for many learners whose L1 does not have voiced fricatives, and issues related to confusion between the two English phones are reported in both perception and production. For example, it was found that L1 Spanish speakers fail to produce a distinction (as measured acoustically) between word medial and word final English /z/ and /s/ (Mairano et al., 2021). With focused perceptual training, however, L1 Spanish students of English improved both identification and production of /z/ (Fouz-González, 2019). Similarly, in a longitudinal transcription study, Kapranov (2022) found that Norwegian EFL learners consistently misheard /z/ as /s/ even after attending a course in English phonetics. Kapranov takes this result to be indicative of L1 Norwegian learners’ persistent (perceptual) difficulties with the similar sounding non-native /z/. For L1 Swedish speakers of L2 English, McAllister (2007) also reports difficulties related to the /s – z/ contrast in codas; while all productions of English /s/ were judged acceptable by a native English listener, the same was only true for about 22% of the Swedish participants’ /z/ productions, and half of the successful /z/ items were produced by the same two most successful participants. Evidently, many different EFL speakers encounter the same type of problems with the English voiced alveolar fricative.

Acquisitional difficulties for the English /s – z/ contrast have also been explored for L1 Danish participants in previous studies. Examining the contrast in word-final position, Eger and Bohn (2015) found that L1 Danish speakers perceived the contrast less categorically than did native English listeners, yet performed more like native English participants in perceptually distinguishing word-final /s/ and /z/ than they did in production. These findings are in line with those reported by Trapp and Bohn (2002) who trained nine L1 Danish adolescents to perceptually identify coda /s/ and /z/ from minimal pairs. While the trainees' mean identification scores had improved after training, there was no significant improvement in their measured production accuracy. In particular, "it was the production of the word-final /z/ rather than /s/ that created problems for the Danes" (p. 349). Moreover, acoustic analyses demonstrated that L1 Danish trainees' vowel-to-fricative ratio was equally short before and
after training, participants thus failing to employ the duration cue common in native English
productions of coda /z/.

Whereas these early studies were concerned with /s/ or /z/ in word final position, Horslund and Bohn (2022) examined how Danes perceive English consonants in initial position. First, they found that initial /s/ and /z/ assimilate to Danish /s/ as a Category Goodness (CG) assimilation type (Best & Tyler, 2007). The authors thus hypothesised that English /s/ is easily identifiable to L1 Danish listeners, while identification of /z/ depends on previous exposure to English. Interestingly, expectations from this hypothesis were not borne out in their following identification study – rather, Horslund and Bohn observed lower identification scores for /s/ than for /z/, and lower sibilant identification scores for the more experienced of two learner groups included. These unexpected results caused the authors to speculate about potential hypercorrection that may lead to such response biases favouring the less familiar phone in a CG pair such as /s/~/z/.

The surprising results from Horslund and Bohn’s study (2022), coupled with previous research and reports of other L1 EFL learners’ issues, motivates this study of L1 Danish listeners’ perception and production of initial English /s/ and /z/ before and after training.<fnref n="1" /> The scope of the current paper is concerned only with the productions of the English sibilant contrast in onset position produced by L1 Danish speakers, as the aim of this paper is twofold: First, we examine the extent to which perceptual training of syllable initial English /s/ and /z/ has an effect on non-native production of the same speech sounds. Since Danish does not have any voiced fricatives, both English sibilants are assimilated to the native /s/ (Horslund & Bohn, 2022), and production of the unvoiced English /s/ is expected to be unproblematic (or sufficiently similar to be identified correctly by L1 English listeners), while production of the voiced /z/ is expected to be less nativelike. Secondly, this research also aims to explore the insights we may gain from different types of evaluations to non-native pronunciation. Specifically, this paper addresses the following research questions:

RQ1: How accurately can L1 Danish speakers produce the syllable initial sibilant contrast /s - z/ (as judged by native English listeners) before training?

RQ2: Do L1 Danish speakers' production of /z/ (the more challenging of the sibilant pair) become more intelligible to native listeners after perceptual training?

RQ3: Which production strategies are deployed by the speakers for whom correct /z/ identification by native evaluators is highest/most improved?

## 2. Method

### 2.1 Participants: Native Danish speakers

Recordings from 45 (F = 34, M = 11) L1 Danish speakers were included in this study. Participants were randomly assigned to the experimental training group (TG, n = 33) or the control group (CG, n = 12). Their profile data are presented in Table 1. Their ages ranged from 20–76 (M = 44.6, SD = 21.9)<fnref n="2" /> and they had started learning English at the mean age of 10.2 (SD = 1.91).<fnref n="3" /> Participants completed a simple language background questionnaire from which

<footnote n="1">¹ More information about the project and our group's research on perceptual training is available on the website: https://cc.au.dk/en/phonetic-flexibility-in-old-age/our-research</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² Note that the participants were recruited to match one of our specified age groups (either 18–35 years or 60+)</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ Younger participants had on average started learning English earlier (8.7 yrs. old) than the older participants (11.7 yrs.)</footnote>
we confirmed that they had not spent more than 6 months in an English-speaking country. On a scale from 1–5 (poor–good) participants also reported their self-assessed level of “ability to understand spoken English” and their “ability to speak English”.

<caption>**Table 1**</caption>

*Background Information for L1 Danish Participants*

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th>TG (n = 33)<br>M (SD)</th><th>CG (n = 12)<br>M (SD)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Age</td><td>44.6 (21.7)</td><td>44.7 (23.4)</td></tr><tr><td>AOL English</td><td>10.2 (1.91)</td><td>10.3 (1.97)</td></tr><tr><td>Score, understand</td><td>4.18 (0.81)</td><td>4.08 (1.08)</td></tr><tr><td>Score, speaking</td><td>4.03 (0.95)</td><td>3.83 (1.53)</td></tr></tbody></table>

## 2.2 Production task

Production of both initial and final /s/ and /z/ were elicited in a delayed repetition task (Flege et al., 1995). Participants first listened to a recording of a native speaker who produced 46 words<fnref n="4" /> separately, inserted in the carrier phrase: *The next word is __*, after which they heard the same voice ask: *What is the next word?* They were then prompted to repeat the word in the carrier phrase: *Let it be __*. Target words examined in the current study were 15 (near) minimal monosyllabic pairs of English words which differed in voicing in the initial fricative (e.g., *sink~zink*). Productions were elicited from participants before the perception tasks (Lab1), and the same production task was completed again after three weeks at a meeting in the lab for post-training test (Lab2). The focus of this paper is limited to the productions of initial /s/ and /z/.

## 2.3 Perception tests and perception training

Perception of the English sibilant contrast was assessed in two separate Two-Alternative Forced-Choice (2AFC) identification tasks in which L1 Danish participants listened to CV and VC syllables, respectively. Token variability was introduced by two different talkers and by various vowel contexts: initial [si], [sa], [su], [zi], [za], [zu], and final [is], [as], [us], [iz], [az], [uz]. In each task participants were asked to determine which sibilant began or ended the syllable. Response buttons were labelled orthographically with “S” and “Z”, and no feedback was provided in the tests. Participants in the experimental group were then trained to perceive onset /s/ and /z/ in a similar identification task, using the same stimuli, but in which corrective feedback was provided after each trial. Trainees were asked to complete a total of 10 training sessions, each of 120 trials, in the course of 3–4 weeks after which the post-training test (identical to the first test) was administered in our lab.

<footnote n="4">⁴ 15 monosyllabic word pairs beginning with /s/ or /z/; 8 word pairs ending with /s/ or /z/</footnote>
## 2.4 Native listener evaluations

Non-native productions of /s/ and /z/ were assessed auditorily by 40 native English judges who were recruited in or near Aarhus, Denmark. Target words were cut from the carrier phrase and presented to listeners who identified the initial sibilant orthographically as either “S” or “Z” in a 2AFC task. Each listening session included 30 English words recorded by three of the L1 Danish participants at Lab1 and Lab2 (30 words x 3 speakers x 2 recordings = 180 items) presented in randomised order, and half of the judges agreed to complete a second session on another day, on which they rated tokens from 3 other speakers. Productions from each of the Danish speakers were evaluated by 4 different native judges, which means that evaluations of each speaker's items are based on the mean identification scores from four listeners. A calculated Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) of 0.84 indicated good reliability between native listener judges in the production evaluation experiment.<fnref n="5" /> Judges reported using English 50–100% in their daily lives (M = 88.5, SD = 15.3), and they had on average spent eight years in a non-English speaking country (SD = 8.15).

## 3. Results

The native listeners' evaluations of sibilant productions were computed in R studio (R Core Team, 2021) using the Tidyverse package (Wickham et al., 2019). Trials for which the target fricative was heard as intended received the score of 1 while trials in which the sibilant was not identified received the score of 0. Average evaluation scores for each participant were calculated as proportions.

Sibilant productions from all 45 native Danish speakers were on average identified as intended in 65.8% of all instances when recorded before perceptual training. These evaluation results were based on 81.4% productions of intended /s/ and 50.3% productions of intended /z/ as summarised in Table 2. About half of the recorded tokens of intended /z/ produced before perception training were identified as /s/ by native listeners. Thirty-three participants trained identification of the /s – z/ contrast auditorily. In the remaining analysis and visualisations, data from the TG and CG are separated and compared.

<caption>**Table 2**</caption>

*Native English (NE) Listeners' Identification of Intended /s/ and /z/ by all Danish (DA) Speakers before Training*

<table><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Identified by NE</th><th rowspan="2"></th><th colspan="2">Fricative intended by DA speaker</th></tr><tr><th>/s/</th><th>/z/</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td></td><th>/s/</th><td>81.4 %</td><td>49.7 %</td></tr><tr><td></td><th>/z/</th><td>18.6 %</td><td>50.3 %</td></tr></tbody></table>

<footnote n="5">⁵ The ICC estimates were calculated using R statistical software (R Core Team, 2021) with the lme4 package (Bates et al., 2015), based on a mean-rating (k = 4), absolute-agreement, one-way random effects model.</footnote>
While identification scores of the intended /s/ productions are consistently high for both
groups at both times of recording (approximately 80% for trainees at Lab 1 and Lab 2; 85–86%
for controls), the /z/ productions are less consistently heard as intended. Boxplots in Figure 1
furthermore reveal great variation among the evaluations of speakers’ recordings of initial /z/
for trainees and controls alike. A logistic mixed-effects model was run using the *lme4* package
(Bates et al., 2015) to examine the effect of training on the evaluation of sibilant production.

Three factors were treatment coded, i.e., the experiment group (TG/CG) with TG as the reference, production session with Lab1 as the reference and intended fricative with “z” as the reference. From Lab1 to Lab2 the evaluated score for /z/ was significantly higher for trainees’ production, $\beta$ = 0.93, $z$ = 5.85, $p$ < 0.001, and a post-hoc z-test comparison using *emmeans* (Lenth, 2025) with Tukey HSD corrections for multiple comparisons shows that that was not the case for the production of /z/ by the control group, $z$ = -1.99, $p$ = 0.49. The interaction between production sessions and the two groups was not statistically significant, $\beta$ = -0.34, $z$ = -1.02, $p$ = 0.31, suggesting that it is uncertain if the trainees’ production actually does become more intelligible than those of the controls.

**Figure 1**

*Intelligibility of Sibilants as Judged by Native English listeners*

<figure><img src="image_29.png" /></figure>

*Note.* Evaluations (EVAL) of intelligibility for the Training Group – TG (left) and Control Group – CG (right)

**3.1 Individual variation**

Individual intelligibility scores for the 33 speakers in the TG were also calculated before and after training (see Appendix for overview). Figure 2 depicts the individual scores for each speaker, and it clearly demonstrates the varied nature of the data. Results from five selected speakers are highlighted (in yellow) to illustrate this point. For example, the /z/ productions of one speaker (S29) were very consistently identified at both times of testing (top yellow line), while /z/ tokens from another speaker (S02) were hardly ever heard as intended (bottom yellow line). Productions of three speakers improved by at least 35 percentage points after training as represented in the steeper slopes in Figure 2. Intelligibility scores from these five selected speakers are also summarised in Table 3.
Figure 2

*Proportion of Correctly Identified /z/ Items*

<figure><img src="image_30.png" /></figure>

*Note.* Intelligibility scores for each individual participant in TG before and after training. The highlighted (yellow) lines represent results from five example speakers.

Table 3

*Intelligibility Scores percentage for /z/*

<table><thead><tr><td>Speaker number</td><td>Lab1 score</td><td>Lab2 score</td><td>Gain score</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>S29</td><td>98.3</td><td>100</td><td>1.67</td></tr><tr><td>S30</td><td>56.7</td><td>95</td><td>38.3</td></tr><tr><td>S08</td><td>45</td><td>80</td><td>35</td></tr><tr><td>S01</td><td>1.69</td><td>48.3</td><td>46.7</td></tr><tr><td>S02</td><td>1.67</td><td>1.67</td><td>0</td></tr></tbody></table>

3.2 Exploring the acoustic properties of /z/

To further probe the nature of successful /z/ productions, tokens from the five highlighted speakers in Figure 2 were analysed for duration of and periodicity in the fricative portion. The three speakers with the highest gain scores (S30; S08; S01) were those whose tokens were most improved in terms of target like pronunciation. Tokens from the two speakers with consistently highest (S29) and lowest (S02) intelligibility scores were also included. Altogether, acoustic measurements were obtained for 150 tokens (15 /z/ words x 2 times of recording x 5 talkers) by selecting the fricative portion and using the voice report in Praat (Boersma & Weenink,
2022) to tally the fraction of locally unvoiced frames, which was then inverted. The results are summarised in Table 4.

**Table 4**

<table><caption>*Duration and Percent of Periodicity of Initial Fricatives in Intended /z/ Productions by Five Speakers*</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">speaker_id</th><th colspan="2">Lab1<br>(pre-training recordings)</th><th colspan="2">Lab2<br>(post-training recordings)</th></tr><tr><th>/z/ duration<br>in ms<br>M (SD)</th><th>percent periodicity<br>M (SD)</th><th>/z/ duration<br>in ms<br>M (SD)</th><th>percent periodicity<br>M (SD)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>S29</td><td>201 (11.6)</td><td>62.5 (30.3)</td><td>216 (26.5)</td><td>90.3 (18.7)</td></tr><tr><td>S30</td><td>207 (20.1)</td><td>10.8 (16.8)</td><td>190 (44.1)</td><td>45 (28.1)</td></tr><tr><td>S08</td><td>204 (23.6)</td><td>10.3 (16.5)</td><td>217 (27.8)</td><td>30.3 (30.8)</td></tr><tr><td>S01</td><td>280 (46.4)</td><td>1.85 (2.13)</td><td>212 (45.9)</td><td>8.84 (12.2)</td></tr><tr><td>S02</td><td>284 (42.6)</td><td>4.6 (8.09)</td><td>269 (29.7)</td><td>4.45 (6.25)</td></tr></tbody></table>

*Note.* Each summary statistic denotes the mean (M) and the standard deviation (SD) of 15 tokens.

Most notably, the mean proportion of periodicity in the initial fricative increases for all speakers after training, except for S02, whose /z/ productions were consistently misidentified by native listeners. Conversely, the more successful speaker S29 produces /z/ with the largest proportion of periodicity, which also increases after training. Plotting the intelligibility evaluations from native listeners against the measured periodicity proportion (see Figure 3, left panel), it becomes clear that native listeners are most likely to identify /z/ when voicing is present in more than 25% of the initial sibilant segment. Average fricative duration decreases for three speakers after training, but in its current form (not normalised for speaking rate) it is uncertain to what extent this measurement reflects alterations to trainees’ fricative productions, although there is a weak trend in the expected direction of shorter fricatives heard more consistently as voiced by the native listeners (see Figure 3, right panel).

**4. Discussion**

This study found that perceptual training of the English /s – z/ contrast coincides with small improvements in productions, in agreement with findings from other training studies (Sakai & Moorman, 2018). Specifically, non-native productions of /z/ are more intelligible to native listeners after training (61.3 %) than before (49.3%), but the intelligibility scores for productions by each individual speaker in the experimental (training) group also demonstrates that there are major differences in how much, and indeed if, speakers’ /z/ tokens become more
<caption>Figure 3</caption>

*Average Intelligibility Score and Acoustic Measurements*

<figure><img src="image_31.png" /></figure>

*Note.* The mean intelligibility score for each intended /z/ item from the five example speakers (rated by four native listeners) are plotted against periodicity in the sibilant (left) and against its raw duration in ms (right).

intelligible (cf. Figure 2). A brief examination of samples of the more intelligible /z/
productions suggests that periodicity in the fricative portion is an important cue to native
listeners' identification of the accented /z/ items. For the three speakers whose /z/ productions
improve the most, the measured percent periodicity increases from Lab1 to Lab2. Is this
perhaps due to them becoming increasingly sensitive to this cue as a result of their perception
training? In order to connect the dots between the evaluations of native listeners' judgments
and the actual realisations from our non-native speakers, more detailed acoustic analyses of all
recordings would be required (Mairano et al., 2021). Doing so could also elucidate the phonetic
details of /z/ tokens in speakers who fail to improve after training.<fnref n="6" /> Furthermore, inspections
into potential lexical biases might reveal a skewed set of target words in which most /s/ items
are much more frequent than the /z/ competitor, from which we would thus also suspect a
preference for the “S” response by native English listeners. Finally, greater familiarity with
Danish-accented English may cause some listeners to more accurately identify the intended
target sounds, so the experimental design means some speakers' tokens may have been
evaluated by more lenient listeners. However, since each native listener only judged
productions from a few speakers it is not possible to meaningfully explore this point from the
current data.

These results raise the question of how we can meaningfully measure (altered) productions
of challenging non-native target phones from highly controlled laboratory recordings.

**4.1 Evaluations of L2 production**

Introducing a framework for conceptualising methods of evaluating the effects of L2
pronunciation instruction, Saito and Plonsky (2009) acknowledge that “[t]here is no single best
assessment method; rather, each instrument carries with it a set of trade-offs” (p. 654).
Production may be assessed more globally, through “listeners’ holistic judgements of L2
speakers’ speech samples” and concepts such as “perceived fluency”, “accentedness”, and

<footnote n="6">⁶ I thank the anonymous reviewer who suggesting this argument.</footnote>
“intelligibility” may be grouped within this holistic construct (p. 656). Relying on human intuitions, such global measures of production proficiency are obviously very subjective in nature, whereas acoustic investigations may provide more objective measures. However, even so, in determining which acoustic properties to examine, subjective decisions and presumed knowledge about target productions cannot fully be avoided. A third type of pronunciation measurement seems to straddle the methods of human-intuition-based and acoustic-based evaluations of specific features, i.e., expert raters who are asked to attend carefully to specific phonetic features (pp. 658–60). This method thus still relies on human evaluations but focuses listeners’ attention to providing a more nuanced measure of the target phones.

In the current training experiment, we defined sibilant target intelligibility in L2 production as a binary judgment from native listeners who were specifically required to evaluate the onset sibilant as either /s/ or /z/<fnref n="7" />. In this procedure we follow the definition of target phone “intelligibility” used by Munro and Derwing (2008), and thus attain a similar method of production evaluation based on the perceptual identification of native listeners. Key differences in methodology, however, involve the number of possible response categories (i.e., resulting in a different number of competitors in the assessment task), the linguistic experiences of the native listeners (e.g., phonetically trained or not, and more or less familiar with speakers’ L1), and the scope of stimuli exposure (listeners evaluating all items or a subset thereof). Such differences are important to acknowledge and to keep in mind when comparing research results across studies, but also in fact within studies, when comparing L2 abilities in different modalities. In the present training experiment, the primary aim was to test the potential effect of perceptual training in the same (perceptual) modality, while a secondary aim was to examine the potential effect of perception training on another modality, production. In an attempt to mitigate what has been identified as important discrepancies in the typically obtained measurements of the two modalities (Thomson, 2022), production was here assessed in a way that emulated the perception task (2AFC identification). It should be acknowledged, however, that there are additional methodological steps to be mindful of in future research, e.g., controlling for lexical frequency of target words or having L2 speakers produce nonsense words (Eger & Bohn, 2015). Other useful ways to obtain knowledge about potential pronunciation improvements involve scalar ratings, in which listeners evaluate the extent to which a spoken item matches a target (Munro & Derwing, 2008; Munro et al., 1996). Obtaining multiple different types of evaluative measures on the same production data helps us better understand the specific aspects that may impact L2 speech.

## 5. Conclusion

L2 production of specific non-native features can be assessed in many different ways, some more nuanced and fine-grained than others. The production data from L1 Danish speakers presented in this paper were collected before and after perceptual training of the English /s–z/ contrast, and the evaluative measure of intelligibility was the ratio of correctly identified sibilants by native listeners. Notwithstanding potential biases in the data, the intelligibility evaluations demonstrate that the group of speakers who trained perception of /s/ and /z/ also produced the contrast more intelligibly after training than was the case for an age matched control group. Intelligibility scores of /z/ tokens in selected speakers were compared to the proportion of periodicity in the fricative, and comparisons revealed that fricatives with at least 25% pulsing were consistently identified as voiced. Computationally extracted measurements

<footnote n="7">⁷ In this sense, we directed evaluators’ attention to specific phonetic details. Listeners were not specifically selected for their meta-linguistic knowledge, and they do not meet the literature criteria for being considered expert raters.</footnote>
of additional acoustic detail applied to the entire dataset of Danish accented sibilants could
perhaps give further insights into the productive L2 development of this particularly
challenging English contrast.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to my colleagues for valuable help and insights: I thank Birgitte Poulsen for
sharing her data with me for this work and Birgitte Poulsen and Ocke-Schwen Bohn for
experimental design and discussions. I also thank Jonas Villumsen for his resourceful
assistance in statistical analyses. Any errors are mine.

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## Appendix

### Individual intelligibility scores for /z/ productions

<table><thead><tr><td>speaker</td><td>Lab1 score</td><td>Lab2 score</td><td>Gain score</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>S01</td><td>1.67</td><td>48.3</td><td>46.7</td></tr><tr><td>S30</td><td>56.7</td><td>95</td><td>38.3</td></tr><tr><td>S08</td><td>45</td><td>80</td><td>35</td></tr><tr><td>S19</td><td>65</td><td>93.3</td><td>28.3</td></tr><tr><td>S21</td><td>43.3</td><td>70</td><td>26.7</td></tr><tr><td>S13</td><td>13.3</td><td>38.3</td><td>25</td></tr><tr><td>S34</td><td>36.7</td><td>61.7</td><td>25</td></tr><tr><td>S25</td><td>26.7</td><td>50</td><td>23.3</td></tr><tr><td>S06</td><td>45</td><td>66.7</td><td>21.7</td></tr><tr><td>S07</td><td>18.3</td><td>36.7</td><td>18.3</td></tr><tr><td>S10</td><td>8.33</td><td>25</td><td>16.7</td></tr><tr><td>S11</td><td>55</td><td>68.3</td><td>13.3</td></tr><tr><td>S20</td><td>6.67</td><td>20</td><td>13.3</td></tr><tr><td>S26</td><td>75</td><td>88.3</td><td>13.3</td></tr><tr><td>S28</td><td>85</td><td>98.3</td><td>13.3</td></tr><tr><td>S31</td><td>86.7</td><td>98.3</td><td>11.7</td></tr><tr><td>S17</td><td>28.3</td><td>38.3</td><td>10</td></tr><tr><td>S35</td><td>73.3</td><td>81.7</td><td>8.33</td></tr><tr><td>S23</td><td>90</td><td>96.7</td><td>6.67</td></tr><tr><td>S03</td><td>96.7</td><td>100</td><td>3.33</td></tr><tr><td>S24</td><td>21.7</td><td>25</td><td>3.33</td></tr><tr><td>S36</td><td>78.3</td><td>81.7</td><td>3.33</td></tr><tr><td>S05</td><td>40</td><td>41.7</td><td>1.67</td></tr><tr><td>S29</td><td>98.3</td><td>100</td><td>1.67</td></tr><tr><td>S32</td><td>85</td><td>86.7</td><td>1.67</td></tr><tr><td>S02</td><td>1.67</td><td>1.67</td><td>0</td></tr><tr><td>S09</td><td>96.7</td><td>96.7</td><td>0</td></tr><tr><td>S14</td><td>53.3</td><td>53.3</td><td>0</td></tr><tr><td>S15</td><td>23.3</td><td>23.3</td><td>0</td></tr><tr><td>S12</td><td>28.3</td><td>25</td><td>-3.33</td></tr><tr><td>S22</td><td>91.7</td><td>88.3</td><td>-3.33</td></tr><tr><td>S33</td><td>43.3</td><td>40</td><td>-3.33</td></tr><tr><td>S04</td><td>8.33</td><td>3.33</td><td>-5</td></tr></tbody></table>

## About the author

Sidsel Holm Rasmussen is a postdoc at the English Department of Aarhus University. She is interested in a wide variety of topics within the fields of speech, hearing, communication and language teaching. Her current research focuses on phonetic and audio-visual training, speech perception and second language acquisition.

Email: sidsras@gmail.com, sira@cc.au.dk
Richter, K. (2025). Prepared to rescue Cinderella? Exploring Austrian EFL student teachers' beliefs about pronunciation teaching and learning. In A. Kirkova-Naskova, P. Humánez-Berral, & A. Henderson (Eds.), *Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on English Pronunciation: Issues and Practices* (pp. 97–108). Université Grenoble-Alpes. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16696158

# Prepared to rescue Cinderella? Exploring Austrian EFL student teachers' beliefs about pronunciation teaching and learning

Karin Richter

University of Vienna

## Abstract

Over the past decade, there has been a growing interest in researching EFL pronunciation learning and teaching. Despite this increased scholarly attention, pronunciation remains a challenging area for many EFL teachers, largely due to the lack of specialised pedagogy courses in teacher education. This paper highlights findings from a study on the views of 78 EFL student teachers at the University of Vienna, Austria. Utilising a quantitative approach, the research explores student teachers' beliefs about their perceived pronunciation proficiency and teaching competence. The results reveal that while most participants are satisfied with their own pronunciation skills, about half of them lack confidence in their ability to teach pronunciation effectively. Furthermore, there is a clear demand for a dedicated didactics course on pronunciation instruction, as the current curriculum prioritises other linguistic areas. Although an existing pronunciation class ostensibly helps improve their confidence in their own phonological competence, it does not adequately prepare them for teaching pronunciation. These findings confirm a need for teacher educators to offer pronunciation teaching courses within EFL training programs, ensuring future educators are equipped to address this often neglected area.

**Keywords:** EFL teacher education, teacher beliefs, English pronunciation teaching, explicit pronunciation instruction

<figure><img src="image_32.png" /></figure>

This chapter is based on the oral presentation given by the author at the 8th International Conference on English Pronunciation: Issues and Practices (EPIP 8) held May 8–10, 2024 at the University of Cantabria in Santander, Spain. It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of the license, please go to: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
# 1. Introduction

Over the past decade, numerous researchers have advocated for a renewed emphasis on EFL pronunciation teaching, a field previously marginalised and metaphorically described as the “Cinderella” of language teaching (Celce-Murcia et al., 1996, p. 323) or “the neglected orphan” (Deng et al., 2009, p. 1; Gajewska, 2021, p. 20). This growing recognition of pronunciation as a legitimate research discipline has led some linguists to observe that Cinderella has seemingly transformed into the “Belle of the Ball” (Derwing, 2019, p. 27). However, the question arises whether intensified scientific attention translates into tangible improvements in pronunciation teaching practices in EFL classrooms. Indeed, this shift does not yet seem to have reached its happily-ever-after stage. As Levis (2021) points out, there remains a noticeable gap between research and practice, with many interesting studies lacking clear implications for teaching and practically-oriented publications showing insufficient grounding in research. In other words, pronunciation pedagogy continues to struggle to keep pace with advancements in research (Kirkova-Naskova, 2023).

Recent studies have confirmed that pronunciation still remains a challenging area for numerous EFL teachers (e.g., Schaefer, 2023; Tegnered & Rentner, 2021). Commonly cited among the core reasons for this neglect is the scarcity of pronunciation pedagogy courses in teacher education programmes (e.g., Baran-Łucarz, 2022; Burri, 2015; Yokomoto, 2016). This is due to many universities still relying on general linguistics courses rather than offering targeted instruction on how to effectively teach pronunciation.

# 2. The pronunciation teaching paradox

Pronunciation is without doubt a fundamental aspect of language competence, playing a pivotal role in both intelligibility and communicative effectiveness in EFL contexts (Celce-Murcia et al., 2010; Jenkins, 2000). Despite clear evidence supporting the benefits of explicit pronunciation teaching and its positive impact on student performance (e.g., Komar, 2019; Murphy & Baker 2019; Rao, 2019; Saito & Plonsky, 2019), many practitioners continue to bypass pronunciation in their lessons (Darcy, 2018; Yoshida, 2016), a phenomenon Darcy (2018) refers to as the “pronunciation teaching paradox” (p. 16).

Research has consistently demonstrated that many EFL teachers confess to being reluctant to teach pronunciation (e.g., Henderson et al., 2012; Murphy, 2018; Schäfer, 2023). Even experienced teachers frequently express unease when correcting or evaluating their students' pronunciation skills, with some avoiding pronunciation instruction altogether (Baker & Burri, 2016; Nangimah, 2020). This resistance is particularly strong among novice teachers, who, confronted with the complexity of diverse classrooms and evolving curricula, tend to view pronunciation as the least important aspect of language teaching (Baker & Burri, 2016). The literature often attributes this reluctance to the absence of emphasis in curricula (Jenkins, 2000), inappropriate teaching materials (Baker & Murphy, 2018), tight schedules and rigid syllabi (Levis & Sonsaat, 2019), as well as a lack of training and confidence (Henderson et al., 2012; Murphy, 2014; Murphy & Baker, 2015).

Against this backdrop, studies by Baker (2011), Burri (2015), or Yokomoto (2016) have shown that EFL teachers' personal experiences with pronunciation learning and teaching greatly impact their confidence in teaching pronunciation, as well as their beliefs about phonological instruction in general. Despite the crucial role these experiences play, many EFL teacher education programs fail to provide adequate training in this respect (Baran-Łucarz, 2022; Derwing, 2019; Murphy, 2014), often leaving teachers ill-prepared to address pronunciation issues in their classrooms. This deficiency in teacher preparation can perpetuate ineffective pronunciation teaching practices, which in turn, hampers learners' progress in
developing pronunciation skills. Conversely, a number of empirical studies have found that a dedicated pronunciation pedagogy course can in fact significantly boost EFL teachers' confidence, leading them to address pronunciation more systematically in their classrooms, compared to those without targeted training (e.g., Baran-Łucarz, 2022; Nagle et al., 2018; Kochem & Levis, 2022).

It is crucial to consider the views of future EFL teachers to tailor teacher education programmes to the needs of 21st language learners, and prevent pronunciation from being relegated to the sides or abandoned in English language classrooms. Given these concerns, it is imperative to explore the role of pronunciation in EFL teacher education more thoroughly.

This research aims to shed light on the effects an explicit pronunciation course has on student teachers' perceptions of pronunciation instruction. Unlike many European EFL teacher training programs, which often lack a focus on practical phonetics (Henderson et al., 2012), the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Vienna offers an explicit pronunciation course as part of its Bachelor of Education (BEd) programme. At present, no courses are available that specialise in pronunciation pedagogy. This prompts the question if a single language competence class is sufficient to build students' confidence in teaching pronunciation while, at the same time, equipping them with a comprehensive repertoire of teaching tools and methods to effectively address pronunciation in their future classrooms.

## 2.1 Research questions

Grounded in the premise that student teachers' views and experiences can exert a significant impact on their prospective pedagogical practices, this study aims to investigate the beliefs advanced student teachers of English at the Department of English and American studies hold about pronunciation teaching and learning. To this end, the following three main research questions were formulated:

**RQ1:** What do EFL student teachers think about their own pronunciation skills?

**RQ2:** How confident do EFL student teachers feel about their pronunciation teaching skills?

**RQ3:** What are EFL student teachers school-related experiences with explicit pronunciation instruction?

# 3. Research context and methodology

## 3.1 EFL teacher education at the University of Vienna

As part of the Bachelor of Education programme, students enrolled in the teacher education programme at the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Vienna are required to complete an explicit pronunciation course. This course, Practical Phonetics and Oral Communication Skills (PPOCS), is designed to assist students in developing their own pronunciation skills (Richter, 2021). In addition to a weekly 90-minute interactive class with a lecturer, the course also includes a 90-minute compulsory language lab session every week for further practice. A closer look at the syllabus for PPOCS 1 reveals that each session focuses on a small number of specific segmental and suprasegmental features, which are practised productively and receptively. As far as pronunciation teaching pedagogy is concerned, pronunciation is addressed only marginally, if at all, in introductory EFL teaching courses.
**3.2 Participants**

The student teachers (N = 78) who participated in this study were all enrolled in the Master of Education programme at the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Vienna. Data was collected from the winter semester 2021/22 to the winter semester 2022/23. The students were informed about the purpose of the study, and their participation was voluntary, ensuring adherence to ethical research guidelines. All the participants had taken PPOCS as part of their BA studies. At the time of data collection, 40% of the respondents were already teaching English at school or another educational institution. Three quarters (76%) of the respondents were female. This 3:1 ratio largely corresponds to the average gender distribution in the teacher education programme at the department. The average age of the participants was 24, and the level of English language competence the participants are expected to have reached at this stage is C1, according to the Common European Framework of Reference (Council of Europe, 2001). In order to ensure confidentiality, participants were coded as R1 through R78.

**3.3 Instruments**

In order to elicit the student teachers' views, a quantitative approach was adopted. A carefully constructed online survey with closed and open questions was administered using Google Forms. Participation was optional and anonymous. The online questionnaire encompassed items regarding students' biographical data, their perception of their own pronunciation skills, and their views on and experiences with pronunciation teaching. The majority of the questions consisted of 4-point Likert-scale items. For some of these items, open questions asking the students to provide reasons for their choices were given. However, not all the respondents added verbal comments in the provided spaces.

**4. Data analysis and results**

The collected data was analysed using Excel. Participant responses were analysed descriptively using mean scores, percentages, and frequencies. For the qualitative part, responses to open-ended items were grouped thematically through content analysis. The thematic analysis involved manually identifying, coding, and grouping responses into key categories based on recurring patterns and concepts. These categories, guided by the research questions, included participants' positive and negative perceptions and experiences, challenges encountered, and suggestions for improvement.

**4.1 Student teachers' own pronunciation skills**

In order to address the first research question pertaining to the student teachers' views about their own pronunciation skills, two items from the questionnaire were considered. Firstly, they were asked to indicate the extent to which they agreed with the statement that EFL teachers need to ensure that they have good pronunciation skills. Figure 1 shows that the majority of all the respondents either strongly agreed (52%) or slightly agreed (42%).

The participants were also asked to rate their satisfaction with their own pronunciation on a 4-point scale with the options: 1 (very unhappy) to 4 (very happy). As Figure 2 shows, the participants' overall satisfaction with their own pronunciation was very high. The majority of the respondents indicated that they were very happy (35.9%) or moderately happy (48.7%). Less than 16% chose the option 'slightly unhappy'. Not a single respondent opted for the option 'very unhappy'.
<caption>Figure 1</caption>

Importance of Good Pronunciation Skills for Teachers

<figure><img src="image_33.png" /><figcaption>Figure 2</figcaption></figure>

Satisfaction with Own Pronunciation Skills

<figure><img src="image_34.png" /></figure>
To gain further insight into the data, the verbal comments some of the students provided were examined (n = 57). Among those who claim that they are happy with their pronunciation, most responses included references to the PPOCS course: "PPOCS really developed my pronunciation skills" (R9) or "I have learned during PPOCS how to improve my skills" (R24). At the same time, many respondents acknowledged room for improvement. as noted in the comments: "It could be better if I had more pronunciation classes and feedback" (R35) or "I wish I spent more time practising and getting better" (R72).

**4.2 Student teachers' confidence to teach pronunciation**

For the second research question about participants' views regarding their abilities to teach pronunciation, responses to the item *How do you feel about your pronunciation teaching skills* were analysed. The participants chose their answers on a 4-point scale from 1 (very insecure) to 4 (very confident). As Figure 3 shows, the data displays a clear divide. Slightly more than half of the participants feel very confident (9%) or quite confident (46.1%), whereas 41% report feeling rather insecure, and 3.9% very insecure.

<figure><img src="image_35.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 3**

Pronunciation Teaching Skills</figcaption></figure>

As far as their verbal comments are concerned, many respondents (n = 47) claim to have learned how to teach pronunciation from the PPOCS course: "[...] because of the teaching/didactic strategies I have acquired through PPOCS" (R9) or "[...] because I went through PPOCS" (R34). At the same time, many of the student teachers point out that they lack the necessary skills, as shown in the following response: "We never learnt how to teach it. Where should I start? Should I introduce the IPA alphabet at first or what and when do I teach pronunciation?" (R5). Another participant cited the lack of pronunciation teaching content in general: "This has never been the focus of any of the courses at uni" (R53). Interestingly, among those who express insecurity, quite a few assert that they themselves experienced problems in the PPOCS course: "I don't have any experience with doing so and struggled with
pronunciation myself" (R59). A further theme which emerged from the data relates to teachers' views on what pronunciation instruction actually entails, as illustrated in the comments: "I feel confident that I can teach pronunciation when mistakes come up" (R33) or "Teaching pronunciation at school would mostly be done indirectly. Focusing on words that are difficult to pronounce, as they come up and focus on specific sounds that way" (R69). These remarks reveal a common misperception according to which pronunciation teaching solely consists of teachers correcting mispronounced words.

**4.3 Student teachers' experience with explicit school-based pronunciation teaching**

The third research question intended to gauge the participants' experiences with explicit pronunciation teaching in a school context. To this end, three different items referring to their experience as learners at school, as observers during school practice, and as teachers were analysed. As can be seen in Figure 4, a staggering 80% of the student teachers report that they did not have any experiences with explicit pronunciation teaching when they were learners at school. Eighty-three percent assert that they had not observed any lessons with explicit pronunciation teaching elements delivered by experienced teachers in the course of their studies. Although 33% claim that they themselves have taught pronunciation explicitly (in the course of their school-based practica), the percentage of those who have not is still very high (almost 70%). Most of the comments related to this item refer to the lack of training, for instance: "No experience; no class taught me how to do that" (R53) and "I have the necessary background knowledge (theory) but am missing the didactic knowledge on how to transmit it in a fun way to the students" (R34).

<caption>**Figure 4**</caption>

*Experience with Pronunciation Teaching*

<figure><img src="image_36.png" /></figure>
In order to find out whether the student teachers feel the need for more support regarding pronunciation teaching, they were asked whether they would be interested in taking a course focusing on pronunciation pedagogy. Figure 5 shows that approximately 80% of the participants expressed an interest in the course (58% definitely, 28% yes, maybe). Some of the comments in favour of such a course provide further insight into the student teachers' views, with many of them pointing at the crucial role of pronunciation, for instance: "It is an important skill to have. Pronunciation makes or breaks a language. Learning effective methods on teaching pronunciation could be useful for my future teaching career" (R10) or "I think I could benefit from activities or games that can be used in class to also motivate my students. I have also had the experience that especially younger learners find it fun to mimic the teacher and explore pronunciation (R37)".

<figure><img src="image_37.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 5**

*Interest in a Pronunciation Teaching Course*</figcaption></figure>

Among the 14% (11% I don't think so, 3% certainly not) who claimed not to be interested in such a course, the opinion that pronunciation is not as important as other skills prevailed: "In my opinion, there are more important things than teaching pronunciation. You can survive without the perfect pronunciation" (R77). A preference for other language skills could also be noted in the responses, for instance: "It might be interesting, but in comparison to teaching other skills, such as vocabulary, speaking etc., I don't think it's as important" (R55). Another theme that emerged relates to how some student teachers question the necessity of teaching pronunciation, given the learners' frequent exposure to online media, as illustrated in the following observation: "Because I don't believe it's really that necessary, most students speak with perfect pronunciation due to computer games, TV shows or podcasts anyways" (R62).
**5. Discussion of results and key findings**

This study set out to explore EFL student teachers' perceptions of and experiences with pronunciation instruction. The findings show that the overwhelming majority of the respondents are satisfied with their own pronunciation abilities after completing a single explicit pronunciation course as part of their undergraduate programme. However, this contrasts sharply with the fact that almost half of them report lacking confidence in teaching pronunciation. Given that the respondents are nearing the completion of their academic education, this deficit is concerning, though not entirely unexpected. In fact, similar results were observed in a large-scale study conducted by Henderson et al. (2012), which surveyed 640 practising EFL teachers across eight different European countries. They also found that their participants rated their own pronunciation proficiency as favourable but their pronunciation teaching skills as poor. This trend seems to persist even more than a decade later, not only in Europe but also in other EFL contexts such as Uruguay (Couper, 2016) or Brazil (Buss, 2016) where teachers do not feel confident teaching pronunciation due to a lack of skills and knowledge. The ambivalence found in the students' appreciation of the explicit pronunciation class was useful but additional training would have been even more beneficial, as observed in other research studies (e.g., Gordon & Barrantes-Elizondo, 2024).

Another important observation from the data is the participants' reported lack of experience with explicit school-based pronunciation instruction. The majority of the student teachers have had very little to no experience with pronunciation teaching as learners, observers, or teachers. About one third of them, however, reported some experience teaching pronunciation in an EFL classroom. The admittedly limited confidence to conduct such lessons without formal training might perhaps stem from the skills and the knowledge gained in a compulsory language competence course focusing on practical phonetics, or from a misconception of pronunciation teaching as merely correcting mispronounced words on the spot (Foote et al., 2016). This limitation to corrective feedback in the form of recasts has also been observed in a number of other studies (Foote et al., 2016; Murphy, 2011; Nguyen & Newton, 2020; Schäfer, 2023).

On a more positive note, the vast majority of students expressed interest in a pronunciation pedagogy course should it be offered as part of their university studies. Other empirical investigations have also highlighted the need for specialised pronunciation training in teacher education programs to adequately prepare student teachers for effective pronunciation instruction in L2 classrooms. For instance, Burri (2015) demonstrated that targeted pronunciation instruction significantly impacts teachers' confidence and effectiveness in the classroom, and thereby positively shapes their attitudes toward pronunciation teaching. Similar results have been found in other studies (Baker, 2014; Kochem, 2022) and even in professional development types of training (e.g., Nguyen & Newton, 2021).

Taken together, these results corroborate earlier research demonstrating that pronunciation teaching still does not receive the attention it deserves in today's EFL teacher education. Thus, these findings underscore the need for a systematic re-evaluation of teacher training programs to ensure that pronunciation is integrated as a core component.

**6. Conclusion and implications**

The objective of the present study was to shed light on whether EFL student teachers enrolled at the Master of Education programme at the University of Vienna feel adequately prepared to rescue Cinderella and teach pronunciation in their (future) classrooms. The findings indicate that an explicit language competence course dedicated to enhancing the students' own pronunciation skills can have a positive impact on their self-confidence regarding their own
pronunciation skills. However, it does not result in a correspondingly high level of confidence
in their ability to teach pronunciation.

Though limited in their focus on a very specific group of student teachers, the insights gained in this project remain valuable in reaffirming a key trend: the persistent gap between research and practice. To ensure high-quality pronunciation instruction in EFL classrooms, student teachers need to be equipped with the methodological expertise and the necessary tools in order to help L2 learners to perceive and produce a new phonological system. Teacher educators have to realise that a lecture on phonetics and phonology or a single explicit pronunciation class does not inherently result in the seamless transformation of this knowledge into actual teaching practices.

By making pronunciation instruction an obligatory component of EFL teacher training education, future generations of teachers will be better equipped to deliver effective pronunciation instruction, leading to improved learning outcomes and greater overall proficiency in English as a foreign language. Such a course for student teachers could then help lay the groundwork for future generations of EFL instructors to develop the confidence needed to teach a skill as vital to communicative language competence as pronunciation.

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## About the author

**Karin Richter** holds a teaching degree in English and German and a PhD in educational linguistics from the University of Vienna. In her PhD she focused on pronunciation learning in an English-medium context. She currently works as a senior lecturer in the Department of English and American Studies, teaching a wide range of classes in the English Language Competence (ELC) programme as well as in teacher education. Her research interests include English pronunciation learning and teaching, (student) teacher cognition, and EFL teacher education.

Email: karin.richter@univie.ac.at
Rupp, L. & Henderson, A. (2025). Pronunciation features noticed by L1 Vietnamese MOOC users: In search of sociolinguistic salience. In A. Kirkova-Naskova, P. Humánez-Berral, & A. Henderson (Eds.), *Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on English Pronunciation: Issues and Practices* (pp. 109–117). Université Grenoble-Alpes. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16696322

# Pronunciation features noticed by L1 Vietnamese MOOC users: In search of sociolinguistic salience

Laura Rupp

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Alice Henderson

Grenoble-Alpes University

## Abstract

The massive open online course (MOOC) English Pronunciation in a Global World – EPGW (Rupp, 2019) has been used by many enrolees around the world over the past five years. This paper examines the potential of using learner data from EPGW for pronunciation research, focussing on the role of salience in English pronunciation learning and teaching. Salience refers to the prominence of linguistic features to language users, a concept deployed in fields like variationist linguistics and language acquisition. There are two types of salience: linguistic (distance measurement) and sociolinguistic (social perception). We explore EPGW as a tool for directly investigating sociolinguistic salience through user-generated data that have not been influenced by the presence of (educational) authorities. In the case study presented here, we focus on Vietnamese-speaking enrolees in four runs of EPGW between 2019–2021. Results from these EPGW users show that they comment on a range of segmental and suprasegmental features, with suprasegmental features more prominent in unprompted comments. While the units in EPGW need to be adjusted to unequivocally establish that sociolinguistic salience is at the heart of the enrolees’ comments, the authors argue for increased attention in pronunciation teaching to the social value that learners attach to English pronunciation features.

**Keywords:** awareness, MOOC, pronunciation teaching, salience (linguistic and sociolinguistic), Vietnamese

<figure><img src="image_38.png" /></figure>

This chapter is based on the oral presentation given by the authors at the 8th International Conference on English Pronunciation: Issues and Practices (EPIP 8) held May 8–10, 2024 at the University of Cantabria in Santander, Spain. It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of the license, please go to: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
# 1. Introduction

The massive open online course (MOOC) entitled English Pronunciation in a Global World EPGW (Rupp, 2019) has been running successfully as a teaching tool for five years. We are currently at a stage at which we can explore the suitability of the learner data for conducting research into English pronunciation learning and teaching. In this paper we explore the usefulness of the MOOC for inquiring into the notion of salience. Salience has been alluded to in various fields, particularly in variationist linguistics and language acquisition. It refers to perceptually prominent linguistic properties to language learners (Jansen, 2014). Generally, the literature makes a distinction between two types of salience: one that is objectively measurable and one that is subjective and may vary across language users. Here we label these two types as linguistic and sociolinguistic salience. Sociolinguistic salience of linguistic features has frequently been probed by surveys/interviews about language attitudes. In this paper we present EPGW as a means for inquiring directly into speakers' sociolinguistic salience. EPGW provides data that are generated by language users without the intervention or physical presence of any authorities such as linguists.

The paper is structured as follows. In Section 2 we delve in more detail into the notion of salience and the distinction between objective and sociolinguistic salience. Section 3 presents EPGW and the nature of the data it generates for inquiring into sociolinguistic salience. We outline our method of analysis in Section 4, focussing on Vietnamese speakers of English in EPGW. In Section 5 we present our results and Section 6, the discussion, is where we also explore refinements for enhancing research into sociolinguistic salience using a MOOC. More broadly, we argue that in pronunciation teaching more attention should be paid to what pronunciation features learners find sociolinguistically salient.

# 2. Previous research specific to the topic

What is salience and what is the role that this notion has been assigned in the explanation of particular linguistic phenomena? From the literature it emerges that the notion of salience, whilst making sense intuitively, is still somewhat elusive. As a working definition we have taken that provided by Jansen (2014) who defines salience as "the fact that linguistic properties can be perceptually prominent to language users" (p. 91). In other words, salience refers to the fact that some linguistic features may stand out. Boswijk and Coler (2020) point out that "salience has no 'intrinsic' ... meaning", rather, "[the] meaning of salience depends entirely on contrast" (p. 714). Much of the literature on salience makes a two-way distinction between: 1) objective or linguistic salience, and 2) subjective or sociolinguistic salience. Both involve a speaker's awareness of a feature. Linguistic salience is caused by language internal properties that can be objectively measured, such as phonetic distance and phonological contrast. In general, the greater the phonetic distance or phonological contrast from one linguistic feature to another, the more salient it should be to a speaker. That is, at the focus is a linguistic property of certain linguistic elements that makes them more salient. For example, some languages lack the English TRAP-vowel /æ/. This vowel will be more salient to speakers of languages that have /e/ in their vowel inventory than to speakers of languages that have /a/, because the phonetic distance between /æ/ and /e/ tends to be larger than between /æ/ and /a/. In comparison, sociolinguistic salience is the result of language-external properties such as a feature being overtly stigmatised or being valued as a high-prestige variant in the target language. In other words, here a context for salience is constructed through "perception by individual speakers" (Trudgill, 1986, p. 11).

In the literature, the notion of salience has been invoked in the explanation of a range of linguistic phenomena. For example, in variationist linguistics, the notion of salience has been
attributed a role in the occurrence of linguistic change such as the diffusion of a feature (Kerswill & Williams, 2002), in the construction of social meaning (Podesva, 2011), or in dialect accommodation (Auer et al., 1998; Llamas et al., 2009). For example, in dialect accommodation, dialect speakers are expected to accommodate to those features of other dialect speakers which are linguistically salient and/or are positively valued, or to avoid features that are negatively valued sociolinguistically. The results of these studies have not always been straightforward; for example, Llamas et al. (2009) studied dialect accommodation in a border town between England and Scotland and found that speakers may not in fact accommodate in the expected direction. Further, a number of aspects of salience still need further scrutiny, such as the range of factors that play a role in salience and the extent to which linguistic features other than phonetic ones, (e.g., phonological, morphosyntactic and pragmatic features), can be analysed in the light of this notion. In second language acquisition studies, it has been argued that the salience of a linguistic feature facilitates learning. Namely, salient features predict the order of acquisition to the extent that linguistically salient features will be learned first and that negatively stereotyped features from the home variety will be replaced first (e.g., Ellis, 2018; Siegel, 2010).

**2.1 Research questions**

Our research questions are:

**RQ1:** Does the MOOC English Pronunciation in a Global World (EPGW) provide suitable data to inquire into the notion of salience of pronunciation features?

**RQ2:** What pronunciation features are considered salient by EPGW users?

**RQ3:** What are the implications of our findings for EPGW in particular and for pronunciation teaching in general?

**3. Research methodology employed**

**3.1 Sample**

The data for our study come from the 4-week massive open online course EPGW (Rupp, 2019), which has two major learning aims: for learners to develop their English pronunciation skills according to their personal pronunciation goals, and for them to become familiar with important socially situated aspects of pronunciation, such as intelligibility, identity, and language attitudes (e.g., Levis, 2005). EPGW offers a large range of different pronunciation exercises and activities, which are meant to provide enrolees with a maximally varied exposure to Englishes spoken around the world. In many of the practice materials, enrolees are invited to upload comments outlining their thoughts or experiences. In addition to this, enrolees make and upload a recording of a word list and a reading passage in the first and last week of the course, to assess their progress.<fnref n="1" /> Since the inception of EPGW in 2019, eight runs have been completed and over 133,000 learners from 191 countries have enrolled. For the purpose of our study, we decided to focus on data from Vietnamese speakers from four runs between 2019 and 2021. Our motivation for choosing this sample was twofold: English and Vietnamese have very different sound systems (e.g., Cunningham, 2013) and are typologically quite dissimilar.

<footnote n="1">¹ For an extensive description of EPGW, including the way in which it seeks to contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, see Rupp et al. (2023).</footnote>
## 3.2 Method

In an Excel spreadsheet, learner data from EPGW were compiled into four datasets for each of the four runs between 2019 and 2021. These sets were grouped by the start date of the run and contained user information and comments made throughout the four weeks of the course. These four large sets were combined into a single data set containing only learner data from enrolees who identified themselves as Vietnamese learners of English. This was initially done by searching the datasets for the character string 'viet' in the comments from enrolees. The comments containing this string were then reviewed to ensure that they contained either the words 'Vietnam' 'Viet Nam' or 'Vietnamese'. Instances where the search term did not correspond to either of these key words were removed, e.g., two mentions of 'soviet'. Subsequently, we read through the comments thus obtained, checking whether the enrolees were in fact Vietnamese or, for example, were simply commenting on a topic having to do with Vietnam but identifying themselves as being of another linguistic background. In this way, we ended up with 262 Vietnamese enrolees.<fnref n="2" />

We then searched the original data sets 2019–2021 against the unique author IDs of these 262 Vietnamese enrolees. The author ID links each enrolee to all the comments they made throughout their time in the course. The comments thus obtained were then filtered manually to exclude comments irrelevant to the subject of study. In order to inquire into the salience of English pronunciation features, we focussed on comments in which the enrolees expressed challenges or concerns regarding their English pronunciation or indicated English pronunciation features that they wished to develop. These comments involved steps right at the beginning of EPGW, a point at which enrolees would not have engaged with any of the course material yet, as well as later steps that address particular English pronunciation features. Excluded were, amongst others, comments congratulating other students or remarking on a preference for one accent over another. In this way, we identified 149 comments. Through the unique author IDs, we were also able to retrieve 40 recordings of enrolees reading out the word list and the reading passage. The links to the voice recordings were also extracted and filed separately.<fnref n="3" />

Pronunciation features mentioned by the Vietnamese enrolees were then coded according to the type of feature, e.g., a particular vowel sound, consonants clusters or word stress. This coding was based on contrastive descriptions of English and Vietnamese pronunciation (e.g., Cunningham, 2013; Swan & Smith, 1987), and input about challenges from a Vietnamese

<footnote n="2">² For the purpose of identifying enrolees from Vietnam, we did not base ourselves on the enrolees' detected country as provided by FutureLearn, the online platform on which EPGW runs; when enrolees register for the course the 'detected country' of an enrolee may be Vietnam, but we cannot know whether the enrolee is a speaker of Vietnamese. We acknowledge that by going about the data in this way, we have removed irrelevant data but also, it is highly likely we will have missed relevant tokens. In the four runs from 2019-2021, the system gave 702 'detected country' Vietnam, whereas only 262 enrolees identified themselves as Vietnamese speakers in their comments. Furthermore, we took as an object of inquiry the set of enrolees described above without taking into account any further social factors; we did not explore any of the other demographic metadata that FutureLearn asks enrolees to provide, such as age range, highest education level and area of employment.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ Analyses of these recordings are not included here. The recordings will enable us to explore whether the comments made by Vietnamese enrolees match features in their actual English pronunciation in the recording. Should this not be the case, there must be another reason for enrolees to mention the English pronunciation features in their comments. Also, where enrolees have made recordings both at the beginning and at the end of the course, it will be easier to identify the extent to which they developed the pronunciation features that they commented upon, which would provide more robust evidence for the salience of these features.</footnote>
English speaker who participated in the mentor programme of the MOOC.<fnref n="4" /> The coding was documented in a code book.

## 4. Data analysis and results

In the 149 selected comments, Vietnamese MOOC users express challenges or concerns regarding their English pronunciation. Some of these comments (N = 109) were prompted. For example, in an exercise on long and short vowels, users are asked: *Does your native language have long and short vowels?*, or in an exercise on word endings: *Do you omit word endings?* Other comments were not prompted (N = 40), e.g., at the beginning of the MOOC, users are asked: *Which English pronunciation features are difficult for you?* and *What are your needs regarding English pronunciation?* Most of the unprompted comments (28/40) were about suprasegmental features. Table 1 provides an overview of the features which Vietnamese speakers commented upon:

<caption>**Table 1**</caption>

*Features Mentioned by Vietnamese EPGW Users*

<table><thead><tr><th>Type of feature</th><th>English feature</th><th># of mentions</th><th>Total # of mentions</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td rowspan="4">Segmental</td><td>vowel length;<br>including in diphthongs and clipping</td><td>27</td><td rowspan="4">87</td></tr><tr><td>consonants,<br>e.g., /f/, /f/, /ʒ/, /dʒ/, /θ/, /ð/, /p/, b/</td><td>21</td></tr><tr><td>vowels,<br>e.g., NURSE</td><td>19</td></tr><tr><td>reduction<br>of consonant clusters</td><td>17</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="4">Suprasegmental</td><td>rhoticity</td><td>3</td><td rowspan="4">62</td></tr><tr><td>word stress</td><td>31</td></tr><tr><td>intonation</td><td>16</td></tr><tr><td>connected speech</td><td>15</td></tr></tbody></table>

Segmental and suprasegmental features are listed, followed by the number of mentions for each feature. The fact that both segmental and suprasegmental features were commented upon may be treated as evidence of salience, with segmentals being slightly more frequently mentioned. Across the two types of features, vowel length and word stress are mentioned a similar number of times (27 and 31 mentions, respectively) and thus seem more salient to these

<footnote n="4">⁴ For an outline of this programme, see Rupp and Henderson (forthcoming).</footnote>
EPGW users. Rhoticity, in contrast, is so rarely mentioned (3 times) that it does not seem salient to them.

We analysed the comments to determine whether they constituted evidence of one or the other type of salience. For example, one Vietnamese enrolee is aware that their pronunciation difficulties affect how successfully they communicate: “I have difficulty in connected speech, speaking unnaturally and making it hard to understand what I am saying” (VMa23ad). They refer to a specific linguistic feature of English but they also assess their own speech as unnatural and difficult to decipher. Another enrolee expresses awareness of a norm, of true pronunciation: “I can speak sentences with true pronunciation but no intonation” (VMdb4d8). They claim their achievement – with ‘true’ presumably meaning being able to pronounce well at the segmental level or correctly in relation to a standard – but then they also state a perceived shortcoming (i.e., no intonation). Both types of comment seem to hint at language-external, i.e., sociolinguistic, salience: how their co-locutors potentially judge their speech and the imposition of a norm.

Note in this relation that many of the features mentioned by the enrolees have been earmarked and researched from a contrastive analysis or a pedagogical perspective, hinting at sociolinguistic salience in educational practices. Studies of typical difficulties faced by Vietnamese English users have argued that vowel length is challenging for their intelligibility (Cunningham, 2009a, 2009b). The monophthongisation of diphthongs has also been described as a common feature (Swan & Smith, 2001). Single consonants, too, may be modified, as pointed out by Cunningham (2009a): “... final /f/ as in the word *if* is often pronounced as [ip]. This pronunciation is viewed as characteristic of Vietnamese accented English in Vietnam – teacher and thus learner awareness of this is high, and the feature is stigmatised” (p. 3). Consonants in final position can also be particularly difficult (Ngo, 2011; Nguyen, 2020) leading to the elision or the simplification of clusters, perhaps in part because Vietnamese does not allow consonant clusters in any position (Avery & Ehrlich, 1992).

In terms of suprasegmentals, Vietnamese is a tonal language, where pitch carries lexical or grammatical meaning, i.e., distinguishes words or their inflections, whereas English can use word stress or the addition of another word such as *this* and *that* instead of a tone (Tang, 2007, 11). Enrolees' comments on word stress (n = 31) constitute half of all comments on suprasegmental features. These comments seem to resonate with adult Vietnamese ESL speakers in a study by Zielinski (2006), whose non-standard word stress patterns made them less intelligible to three native Australian listeners. For example, as Cunningham (2009a) notes, “the use in English of the rising *sac* tone on syllables that have a voiceless stop in the coda ... can result in a pitch prominence that may be interpreted as stress by listeners” (p. 2). Connected speech is another area where Vietnamese and English differ. English exhibits varied sandhi variation in all registers and speech rates, with widespread linking, assimilation and dissimilation, deletion, and epenthesis. In contrast, Vietnamese-accented English rarely exhibits any such features (Cunningham, 2009b).

**5. Discussion of results and key findings**

In our search for evidence of sociolinguistic salience in Vietnamese EPGW enrolees, three key findings emerge:

1) Vietnamese EPGW enrolees post unprompted comments, so they do have some awareness of particular English pronunciation features;

2) Both segmental and suprasegmental features are commented upon;
3) Given 1), a MOOC has potential as a suitable tool for enquiring into the salience of pronunciation features.

The results of our study demonstrate that Vietnamese enrolees in EPGW show awareness of a range of both segmental and suprasegmental English pronunciation features, with a slight majority of the unprompted comments (28/40) being about suprasegmental features. They flag both as features that are either challenging for them or which they wish to develop in their English pronunciation. Does this awareness stem from linguistic or sociolinguistic salience? Two issues arise here. The issue with linguistic salience is that whilst relative distance in pronunciation may be quite straightforwardly measured for vowels, it is not straightforward for suprasegmental features such as stress and intonation. How does one measure the distance in stress between a monosyllabic language like Vietnamese and a stress-timed language like English? Or between a tonal language and a non-tonal language? An issue with sociolinguistic salience is that enrolees in EPGW are not asked about the reasons for flagging the English pronunciation features that they do. Is it because they were told about these features in their education? Our survey of the research literature on Vietnamese English speakers suggests that suprasegmental features are addressed to a lesser extent than segmental features. However, Ha Noi Open University provided us with the syllabi of two English Phonetics and Phonology courses that they run, which showed that they pay attention to segmental and suprasegmental features for an equal number of weeks. Perhaps the Vietnamese enrolees have had particular social experiences regarding the English pronunciation features that they mentioned in their daily lives; because the learning units in EPGW do not ask enrolees for the motivation of their comments, we cannot tell. Nonetheless, the fact that Vietnamese enrolees flagged the range of features observed reveals that these are important to them, regardless of whether the attached importance is due to linguistic or sociolinguistic salience.

**6. Conclusion and implications/applicability**

The solution for probing sociolinguistic salience in EPGW would seem to be to explicitly ask enrolees to motivate their comments regarding English pronunciation features that they find challenging or would like to develop in their English pronunciation. This would work best in steps at the beginning of EPGW, when enrolees have not yet engaged with any steps that address particular pronunciation features (which may prompt them to post a comment about those features).

More broadly, we would like to advocate an approach to English pronunciation teaching that takes account of and addresses English pronunciation features that may have social value for people developing their English pronunciation. Knowledge of language-internal factors (linguistic salience) constitutes a sound foundation for pronunciation teachers, yet they should also be knowledgeable about the language-external factors (sociolinguistic salience) which impact upon their learners. Teachers may prefer to not prioritise a feature if it contributes little to intelligibility, e.g., the English dental fricatives, yet learners may be particularly motivated to work on such features in order, for example, to avoid stigmatisation. Pronunciation teachers could take the opportunity to expertly balance their objectives with those of their learners. Following Boswijk and Coler (2020, p. 714), salience is not a static property of phonetic forms or an inherent attribute of units of this kind. The degree of salience of a form can differ between speakers.
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**About the authors**

**Laura Rupp** is a Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics and the director of the Centre for Global English at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She created the online course (MOOC) English Pronunciation in a Global World. Her research expertise is in grammatical language variation and change, and in English pronunciation learning and teaching. She has published internationally on both subjects. Her work has been funded by the British Academy and The Netherlands Initiative for Education Research. Her project Language Stories was granted patronage by the Dutch UNESCO Commission.

Email: l.m.rupp@vu.nl

**Alice Henderson** is a Full Professor at Grenoble – Alpes University, France, where she teaches English for Specific Purposes to STEM students and is currently the assistant director of the LIDILEM research group. She taught English phonetics and phonology to English majors for 24 years at another French university and has been involved in teacher training in France, Norway, Poland, and Spain. In 2009 she initiated the bi-annual international conference English Pronunciation: Issues & Practices (EPIP). She has published internationally on English pronunciation learning and teaching, the perception of foreign-accented speech, and English Medium Instruction (EMI).

Email: alice.henderson@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr
# The effects of explicit pronunciation instruction: A study of advanced Austrian EFL students

Valerie White-Hautzinger, Marija Djenadic, Carolin Rumpler, and Miriam Fiala

University of Vienna

## Abstract

As English consolidates its role as a globalised language and a crucial medium for communication across nations, pronunciation emerges as a contributing factor to achieving international intelligibility. This, in turn, emphasises the importance of pronunciation teaching for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. Students at the University of Vienna complete the obligatory explicit pronunciation instruction (EPI) course Practical Phonetics and Oral Communication Skills 1 (PPOCS1) and its accompanying language lab, focusing on one of the two offered target varieties. In this course, students receive EPI on both segmental and suprasegmental features. This study examines how such EPI affects 82 second-year EFL university students' pronunciation, specifically analysing three segmental features ( /θ – α:/, /əʊ – oʊ/, /r/) assessed by four trained raters using a rating scale. Respondents were recorded reading the same text at the beginning and the end of the 14-week course. The auditory analysis of the data reveals a significant shift towards their chosen target variety after EPI, most notably in the consistent use of /oʊ/ in General American English (GAE) and the diphthong /əʊ/ in Standard British English (SBE). Given these findings, this research aims to inspire curriculum designers to recognise the value of integrating EPI into their programmes.

**Keywords:** auditory analysis, explicit pronunciation instruction, segmental features, tertiary EFL programmes

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# 1. Introduction

As globalisation turns English into a key tool for communication, pronunciation emerges as a factor for personal and professional success. Research shows that explicit pronunciation instruction (EPI), involving direct structured teaching of pronunciation features, improves intelligibility and reduces listener effort (Darcy, 2018) across various language backgrounds, including Indonesian (Pardede, 2018), Japanese (Saito, 2011), Kurdish (Mahmood, 2023), and Tunisian Arabic (Bouchhioua, 2016). However, there is a research gap regarding how such instruction affects EFL learners from German backgrounds, particularly in approximating specific varieties of English.

The existence of this gap is unsurprising as pronunciation instruction itself remains underrepresented in language teaching, particularly in tertiary language programmes (Darcy, 2018). This is especially concerning given that many university students of English aspire to become English teachers themselves, who function as role models for their students but often receive neither a sufficient amount of instruction to improve their own accents nor training to teach pronunciation (Henderson et al., 2015). For those pre-service teachers, clear and structured teaching of phonetic and phonological aspects (i.e., EPI) can be effective for modifying pronunciation. The mandatory Practical Phonetics and Oral Communication Skills 1 (PPOCS1) course at the University of Vienna provides such explicit training in both segmental and suprasegmental features, helping EFL students improve their oral proficiency in either Standard British English (SBE) or General American English (GAE) (Richter, 2021). This study examines how this EPI course impacts the development of three segmental features ( /ð – a:/, /əʊ – əʊ/, and postvocalic /r/) in advanced EFL students who are mainly L1 German speakers (N = 82). Using pre- and post-recordings, this study provides insights into the effects of EPI on learners with a German language background across two different English varieties.

# 2. Previous research in the field

Previous research highlights the positive impact of EPI on L2 learners' pronunciation skills. For example, it enhances consistency at both the segmental and suprasegmental levels, along with improving word segmentation skills (Darcy, 2018). Beyond speaking skills, EPI has been found to strengthen auditory language perception (Linebaugh & Roche, 2015), spelling (Prator, 1971), and vowel perception (Ghorbani et al., 2016). These findings highlight the broad benefits of pronunciation instruction, though none focus on specific target varieties, such as SBE and GAE, or German EFL learners. These learners often present distinctive challenges, such as monophthongisation of diphthongs (Mende, 2009) and struggling with vowels rather than consonants (Tatzl, 2011), highlighting the need for targeted research on this learner group.

Against this backdrop, various types of pronunciation instruction have been shown to improve advanced EFL learners’ pronunciation skills (Gordon & Darcy, 2022), with some approaches more effective than others. Atar (2018) emphasises the importance of EPI in meaningful contexts, focusing not only on perception but also on production to enhance fluency. To create such a meaningful context, Galante and Piccardo (2022) integrated controlled speech practice, along with weekly audio recordings, extensive feedback, and self-reflections, which proved highly successful. Studies comparing explicit and implicit approaches generally show that explicit instruction can have larger effects on students’ pronunciation. For instance, students who received eight weeks of EPI showed greater improvement in their English pronunciation compared to those who received implicit instruction (Yakut 2020), a finding also supported by Gordon et al. (2013), whose study used EPI in combination with a presentation-practice-production sequence over the course of three weeks. Both of these studies used pre- and post-recordings of students reading aloud. These