Reading++Lara+Ducate+and+Lara+Lomicke

Language Learning and technologie: Lara Ducate and Lara Lomicke Podcasting : an effevtive Tool for honing language students' pronunciation?

1 issue: it is difficult to teach pronuncaition 2issue: not possible in a typical language classroom ( teacher often lack of skills) Consequently, learners quiet often do not learn pronunciation before an upper lever. Children are deprived of systematic pronunciation training until late in theier language careers. //Even more true here, because before the arrival of french language assistant, teacher used to teach french but they do not feel confident with it and especially pronuncaition, they kind of skip that part of learning.//

//Historically, with the advent of the communicative approach, there may have been some confusion as to the place and role of pronunciation in language learning. Terrell (1989), for example, suggests that those teaching from a communicative approach "have not known what to do with pronunciation" (p. 197). Likewise, Pennington and Richards (1986) discuss that pronunciation is often viewed as having "limited importance" in communicative curricula (p. 207).// That happened in England where teacher always tells a child that the way he pronunces the word has no importance. In fact one of the assistant told me that when she said "école" none of her students understood her because they have been used to hear their teacher saying "icoule". At that point, we cannot go on pretending that pronunciation is not important. Of course a learner will almost never be able to speak as perfectly as a native speaker. However, we cannot forget to teach pronunciation. //Elliott (1995) maintains that "teachers tend to view pronunciation as the least useful of the basic language skills and therefore they generally sacrifice teaching pronunciation in order to spend valuable class time on other areas of the language" (p. 531).

While the age that someone begins learning a FL seems to have the largest effect on pronunciation (Piper & Cansin, 1988; Thompson, 1991), studies have shown that training can also help to improve students’ pronunciation (Graeme, 2006; Lord, 2005; Ramírez-Verdugo, 2006). After two weeks of training on specific sounds, Graeme (2006) found that the average error rate dropped from 19.9% to 5.5%, and in a delayed post-test to 7.5%, which illustrates that focused instruction can lead to phonological changes.//

What factors affect pronunciation?
 * The Age: has the largest effect ( in my classes, some of my students have been to France or lived in France for a few years while they were younger and this really affect their pronunciation. They are much better then the other.)
 * Training can help to improve ( Graeme, Lord ; Ramirez-Verdugo studies)
 * listening to Native Speaker (NS) and comparing their speech.
 * SLL have to be aware of phonetics; someone has to teach them.
 * The Prosody as another part of pronunciation: //"patterns in individual words of stress,pitsc and tone and rhythmic and intonational patterns of longer utterances//" (Pennington). Learners tend to use L1 intonation patterns when speaking in the L2. Prosody as to be taugh.

What can we do to improve Pronunciation?
 * Use the Technology as WINLITCH. It is advantageous because this program does not rely on student's own perceptions of their pronunciation. But it shows excatly how they sound compare to NS but there is a huge lack of contextuality.
 * PODCASTING: an audio file that anyone can create using a computer, microphone and a software program. One posted to the Web, podcasts can be accessed, downloaded and played. Podcasting can empower students by giving them opportunities to create and publish for a real audience. In SLA, Swain and Lapkin (1995) recognize the output as essential for second language learners. One strategy they suggest is having students listen to themselves as they edit their own output, and then go back, listen again, and revise if necessary. This also allows them to receive feedbacks.

Why is podcasting good? > The analysis > 8 students had to podcast themselves ( between 18 and 22 years old) after having listen to a NS talking about a foreign trip. Then they had to podcast themselves while speaking about any topics of their choice. > Two judges evaluated them: a NS and a NNS. They focussed on two aspects: They had to give them a note between 1 and 5. > The analysis was done in pairs: pre-test and post-test. > They concluded that 30% of the German Students improved regarding comprehensibility and 44% of German students improved their accent from the pre- to post-test. However only 10% of the French students improved their accent from the pre-to post-test. > From the students point of view, they liked to listen to NS before recording themselves, they found it more easier and they ccould work on words that they found difficult to pronunce. However they did not like the one where they had to speak by they own, they found it much more complicated. > They all indicated their desire to participate in a similar project in the future.
 * ** It is not a pronunciation drills where children repeat after the teacher.
 * It is meaningful and it uses more than just a word out of context.
 * It contextualises.
 * It is an easy way to have children memorize words when they can put them on their Ipod and listen to them whenever they want. The study of Amemiya, Hasegava, Kaneko, Miyakoda and Tsukahara (2007) concludes: //"after two weeks, the Ipod participants retained the meaning of 40% of the English words,while only 27% were retained by the conventional paper-and-pencil group."//
 * Lord's study points out in 2008 that it allows students to really improve they pronunciation.
 * comprehensibility scale ( completely, mostly, fairly, almost not, not comprehensible)
 * accentedness scale ( nativelike, almost nativelike, between nativelike and nonnative, more nonnative and nonnative)

The result: There are several explanations to why these participants did not really improve their pronunciation skills:
 * lack of time, 16 weeks is not enough
 * their focus was not specifically dedicated to this task.
 * not enough paractice

Pedagogical Implications: Podcasting can be used as an extra practice to encourage students to focus and improve pronunciation.
 * podcastind and repeated recordings alone are not enough to improve pronunciation over an academic semester
 * However podcasting can be useful if there were more classroom pratice, if the teacher focuses on pronunciation
 * it would be better to add an NS to podcasting so that the student can compare himself with the NS