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ENQUIRE PROJECT DETAILS BY GENERAL PUBLIC |
Project Details |
Funding Scheme : | General Research Fund | ||||||||||||||||||||
Project Number : | 18600218 | ||||||||||||||||||||
Project Title(English) : | Effects of phonological rule-based and acoustic perceptual-based instructions on the prosodic acquisition of English Word Stress by Chinese ESL learners | ||||||||||||||||||||
Project Title(Chinese) : | 以音韻規則和聲學感知的教學對中國ESL學習者英語單詞重音韻律習得的影響 | ||||||||||||||||||||
Principal Investigator(English) : | Dr Chen, Hsueh Chu | ||||||||||||||||||||
Principal Investigator(Chinese) : | |||||||||||||||||||||
Department : | Department of Linguistics and Modern Language Studies | ||||||||||||||||||||
Institution : | The Education University of Hong Kong | ||||||||||||||||||||
E-mail Address : | hsuehchu@eduhk.hk | ||||||||||||||||||||
Tel : | 2948 7376 | ||||||||||||||||||||
Co - Investigator(s) : |
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Panel : | Humanities, Social Sciences | ||||||||||||||||||||
Subject Area : | Education | ||||||||||||||||||||
Exercise Year : | 2018 / 19 | ||||||||||||||||||||
Fund Approved : | 459,320 | ||||||||||||||||||||
Project Status : | Completed | ||||||||||||||||||||
Completion Date : | 30-6-2021 | ||||||||||||||||||||
Project Objectives : |
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Abstract as per original application (English/Chinese): |
English is stress-timed while Chinese is syllable-timed, which makes English word stress placement difficult for Chinese learners of English. A shift of the stress from the left syllable to the right syllable seriously hampers intelligibility (e.g. PERmit vs perMIT) and inappropriate word stress affects comprehension more adversely than segmental errors. While many theorists and practitioners have observed that first language (L1) learners can easily acquire the stress as a by-product of the acquisition of a new word, it is commonly found that second language (L2) learners with a tone-language background (e.g. Chinese) encounter much more difficulty in English stress acquisition than L1 learners. The inconsistent research findings in English word stress lead to the on-going debate of “word stress deafness.” Specifically, the debate involves two theoretically and practically important questions: Is learning stress on a word-by-word basis an efficient way for L2 learners to acquire an understanding of word stress rules? If not, is there a better way?
This project aims to answer these two questions with new empirical evidence. Specifically, the project will develop assessment tasks to identify Chinese learners’ difficulties in English word stress placement in perception and production, design training programs to examine whether word stress can be acquired systematically, and conduct a teaching experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of the training programs in facilitating the learning of word stress. This project is innovative in four aspects: (a) this project integrates linguistics and education, (b) the assessment tasks cover both production and perception; (c) each training program targets a distinct approach, namely, phonological rule-based and acoustic-perceptual-based approaches; (d) unlike observational or correlational studies that are commonly adopted in the social sciences, the teaching experiment is well controlled in that random assignment, innovative teaching materials, effective assessment, and recall protocols are implemented.
This project will generate substantial impact in both theory and practice. Theoretically, factors that weigh most heavily on learners’ acquisition of word stress will be identified, new empirical evidence to the debate on the learnability and teachability of word stress will be collected, and a new research paradigm of word stress learning will be created. Practically, diagnostic profiles of learners’ pronunciation can be established, optimal training program of English word stress will be obtained, the assessment tasks and teaching kits can be further adapted to different levels of learners (primary, secondary, college, and adults) and learners with different language backgrounds (e.g., Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese and Korean).
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Realisation of objectives: | Objective 1 – to construct assessment tasks to measure Chinese learners’ perceptions and productions of English word stress Objective 1 has been fully achieved. The assessment tasks were constructed by two steps – test word selection, and task generation for the pre-, post- and delayed post-tests. In the first step, the test materials used in the three tests were the 62*3 relatively less common words mainly chosen from the Graduate Examination Records (GRE) vocabulary (word frequency determined by the British National Corpus online). The purpose of such selection was to ensure that the participants read the word by their linguistic knowledge but not their prior knowledge of the words. Among the 62 words in each set of word list, 12 had specific syllabic structures (half of them fitted the regular stress pattern and the other half did not), 26 had specific phonological similarity patterns (prefix, neutral suffix, non-neutral suffix, compound structure etc.), and 24 involved specific stress-vowel reduction patterns (primary stressed-unreduced, secondary stressed-unreduced, unstressed-unreduced, and unstressed-reduced). In the second step, a production task and a perception task were generated for the three tests to measure participants’ proficiency to correctly assign lexical stress to uncommon English words. In the production task, the participants were instructed to read aloud each listed word in the sentence frame ‘I said _ this time’ continuously. The perception task involved the words as in the production task were shuffled in different orders and recorded by a native English speaker to examine whether the participants’ perception of English stress placement was consistent with their production. The participants listened to the recording and indicated the syllable with primary stress. The recall protocols were integrated in the post-test to assess the participants’ meta-phonological awareness (e.g., noticing their own problems with L2 word stress, self-repair, and categorization of problems) and to examine the effectiveness of the training programs. After completing the production and perception tasks, the participants were asked to play back the recordings of their readings in the production task and perform analytic listening by following a set of instructions, which were immediate retrospective protocols. They self-corrected the mistakes noticed following the immediate retrospective protocols and attempted to express their thoughts and reflections. After that, the participants followed the introspective protocols and performed self-reflection on their own English word stress acquisition and training experience at the phonological level with the help of guided questions. Objective 2 – to develop new teaching kits for phonological rule-based training and acoustic perceptual-based training Objective 2 has been fully achieved. The teaching kits are available for public access on a webpage in the English pronunciation teaching and learning website (https://corpus.eduhk.hk/english_pronunciation/index.php/word-stress-teaching-kit/). There are four integral elements for the teaching kits – an overview of English word stress knowledge, materials used for the training in this project, tips for teaching English word stress obtained from the results of this project, and useful websites related to English word stress teaching. The overview of English word stress knowledge is presented in the form of an Edpuzzle video, which includes visual and audio presentations of basic information of English word stress in terms of phonetics and phonology, together with quick quizzes to help teachers and learners grasp the gist of the topic. PowerPoints and worksheets of eight sessions of the phonological rule-based and the acoustic perceptual-based training respectively are available for public access. Contents of the two training approaches used in the project are summarized below. In Session 1, both groups of participants learnt symbols and pronunciation of English consonants and vowels, English vowel chart and basic articulatory knowledge, and how to divide English words into syllables. For the rule-based instruction group, in Session 2, they were guided to apply the normal stress rule in reading an unfamiliar word. From Sessions 3 to 8, the participants follow the procedure of observing word stress placements in words with particular syllable structure, phonologically similar words, and words with vowel reduction, and then generalize word stress rules. For the acoustic-based instruction, in Session 2, the participants learnt how to locate, download, and listen to sample recordings of native English speakers’ pronunciation of words and how to observe word stress by duration, intensity, and pitch using Praat. From Sessions 3 to 8, the participants followed the same procedure to analyze word stress in their reading and compare with native speakers: 1) Divide English words into syllables 2) Visually observe and measure pitch height, intensity, and duration of each syllable of their own reading and decide which syllable receives primary word stress 3) Visually observe and measure the same cues of native speakers’ reading of the same word 4) Visually observe the acoustic cues and compare the values of their own reading and the native speakers’ reading 5) Adjust their reading based on the comparison. The teaching tips summarized the suggestions obtained from the project, such as useful rules for English word stress assignment, the most frequently mistaken word stress patterns, and flowcharts for deciding word stress assignment, conducting an acoustic comparison of word stress, and performing the metaphonological awareness task. The useful websites compiled a list of online resources which contain content focusing on the teaching and learning of English word stress, and also quizzes and exercises. Objective 3 – to conduct an experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of the new training programs to improve Chinese learners’ perception and production of English word stress Objective 3 has been fully achieved. This project developed a new research paradigm from both phonological and phonetic approaches to exploring the possibilities of word stress learning. The experiment was designed to investigate the differences in English stress acquisition before and after phonological rule-based and acoustic perceptual-based instructions. There are five stages of the whole experiment – a pre-test, eight face-to-face rule-based or acoustic-based instruction sessions, an immediate post-test with recall protocols, and a delayed post-test. In the pre-, post- and delayed post-tests, the participants performed both production and perception tasks as described in Objective 1. Two groups of participants (30 in each group) received an eight-session phonological rule-based instruction or acoustic perceptual-based instruction (as summarized in Objective 2) and one control group (30 participants) had regular English classes. Retrospective and introspective protocols were completed by the participants after the immediate post-test to investigate participants’ self-reflections and comments on the training program they have attended. All five stages of the experiments were fully executed. Objective 4 – to reveal participants’ views on the effectiveness and feasibility of the new training programs Objective 4 has been fully achieved. The participants’ views on the effectiveness and feasibility of the new training programs were revealed by applying recall protocols which elicited the participants’ meta-phonological awareness and opinions towards the training programs. The recall protocols generated qualitative data as they involved the participants’ self-reflections and comments. For each participant, qualitative data about the extent to which they felt the training program was helpful for their English word stress improvement, whether they would apply the training approaches in their own learning and teaching, and what strategies they would use in deciding word stress placement were obtained. | ||||||||||||||||||||
Summary of objectives addressed: |
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Research Outcome | |||||||||||||||||||||
Major findings and research outcome: | The relationship between English word stress production and perception and how the stress patterns (listed in manuscript 1 under review) affected the relationship for Chinese ESL learners were examined. Several observations were made – a) accuracy of word stress perception was generally higher than production; b) accuracy of production was higher than perception for 11 stress patterns; c) production of English word stress was better than perception for the stress patterns with high production-perception symmetry; and d) deciding the existence of vowel reduction in unstressed syllables was more challenging when the target vowel is /ɒ/ than /æ/. After receiving instruction, the participants’ mean accuracy rate of English word stress placement from both experiment groups had been improved. The ANOVA results revealed that the changes were significant from the pre-test to the delayed post-test for both production and perception tasks (rule-based: production - F(2,87) = 10.642, p < .001**, perception - F(2,87) = 9.749, p < .001**; acoustic-based: production - F(2,87) = 6.985, p = .002*, perception - F(2,87) = 12.748, p < .001**). For the participants from the control group, no significant changes on their performances in both production and perception tasks can be decoded. Furthermore, the rule-based instruction approach was more effective for the improvement of word stress placement accuracy for the production tasks. The acoustic-based instruction approach was more effective for the improvement of word stress identification accuracy for the perception tasks. Over 70% of the participants in the rule-based instruction group expressed that English word stress rules were explicit yet complex and could not be applied to every word. It is more suitable for adult learners. Over 80% of the participants in the acoustic-based instruction group indicated that the training was beneficial, useful, and effective for their English word stress learning. They could understand the gaps between their own production with the native speaker’s speech with help of the visualization and quantification of acoustic cues though it might be rather time-consuming (qualitative data provided in Manuscript 3). The use of recall protocols elicited the participants’ metaphonological awareness regarding the acquisition of English word stress. In the retrospective protocols, both low- and high-level learners reported the greatest number of medium level awareness, and high-level learners also showed more high-level awareness. In the introspective protocols, the participants opined that cognitive and memory strategies were commonly used in their English word stress learning (please refer to Manuscript 2 for more details). | ||||||||||||||||||||
Potential for further development of the research and the proposed course of action: |
The project can be further developed from three aspects – large scale examination, knowledge transfer in adult education institutions and APP production. The well-designed assessment tasks and training materials had been evaluated by 90 participants in the current study. To consolidate the effectiveness of the tasks and materials, they could be further examined in authentic English classrooms in a larger scale. As the results indicate clear improvements of English word stress accuracy for adult learners, knowledge transfer activities such as workshops and seminars could be conducted in tertiary-level institutions. Teachers and learners may be invited to attend the activities and be informed of the new English word stress teaching and learning approaches (i.e. rule-based and acoustic-based). To further implement the pedagogical output of this project, especially for the acoustic-based training which used Praat to visualize and measure acoustic cues of English word stress, an APP may be developed to reduce the difficulty in understanding the acoustic cues. It is expected that the tool can measure the acoustic cues such as formant values, intensity, duration, and pitch height, and translate the meaning of the acoustic cues into layman’s language so that learners without knowledge about acoustic phonetics can understand the information easily. | ||||||||||||||||||||
Layman's Summary of Completion Report: | It is widely recognized that English word stress is challenging for both teachers and learners, since it is highly unpredictable and difficult to be generalized. Traditionally, English word stress is acquired on a word-by-word basis, which is inefficient. To address this issue, the research project aimed to a) identify Chinese learners’ difficulties in English word stress production and perception; b) design and examine two innovative English word stress training approaches (i.e., rule-based and acoustic-based); and c) provide teaching implications and learning suggestions for the public based on the results. The project has its significance and values in four aspects. First, the project provided empirical evidence to reveal the impact of various factors that was claimed to affect English word stress placement in both production and perception. Second, the project developed two English word stress training approaches phonologically and phonetically to explore the new possibilities of word stress acquisition other than word-by-word memorizing. Third, results of the project had been developed into teaching kits with ready-made teaching materials which can be easily adopted or adapted by language teachers. Finally, impact of this project is realized by gaining visibility in public websites, workshops, seminars, and prestigious international conferences. | ||||||||||||||||||||
Research Output | |||||||||||||||||||||
Peer-reviewed journal publication(s) arising directly from this research project : (* denotes the corresponding author) |
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Recognized international conference(s) in which paper(s) related to this research project was/were delivered : |
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Other impact (e.g. award of patents or prizes, collaboration with other research institutions, technology transfer, etc.): |
SCREEN ID: SCRRM00542 |