Getting the Biggest Bang for Your Buck Maddie Kiley, Douglas
Margolis, & Amara Treuenfels University of WisconsinRiver Falls
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Pronunciation Research Step One Task Design Speech Samples Step
Two Rating Scale Ratings of Speech Samples Step Three Transcription
Coding & Analysis 2 RQ1: What are the most frequent
pronunciation issues of Korean and Taiwanese ELLs? RQ2: What
factors most contribute to nave listeners ratings? RQ3: Does task
type affect performance and ratings?
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Step One: Tasks Description Narration Script 3
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Collection of Speech Samples 4 GenderAge Study Abroad English
Practice Years English Study MaleFemale< 23>24YesNo Private
Tutor Language Institute Mean (SD) Taiwanese66102752 13.3 (2.54)
Korean28649164 16.2 (2.66)
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Step Two: Rating Raters N = 17 3 Males 14 Females Ages 20 28
(Mean = 24, SD = 2.34) All studied a 2nd language 14 had
international travel experience 5
Findings 9 TaiwaneseKorean Pauses2.081.9 Filled Pauses39.3
Grammar169.5 Total Words189172 Words per Second1.771.46
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Most Frequent Pronunciation Errors 10
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Years of Study on Fluency & Comprehensibility 11
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Pronunciation Errors on Fluency 12
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Grammar Errors on Fluency 13
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Implications & Limitations For assessing oral tasks, the
length and total word count should be taken into consideration.
Specific attention to interdental phonemes would be beneficial for
both populations. Koreans tend to articulate each phoneme, whether
accurate or inaccurate. Taiwanese diversity of pronunciation errors
was over 50% larger than that of the Koreans. This suggests that
whole-group pronunciation discussion would be more beneficial to
Korean students. Years of Study had the greatest effect on Fluency
and Comprehensibility Ratings Grammar errors appear to NOT impact
fluency ratings Task does make a difference 14
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For more information Doug Margolis Dept of English: TESOL
Program University of Wisconsin-River Falls River Falls, WI 54022
Office: 715-425-3754 [email protected] Amara Treuenfels
[email protected] 15 [email protected] Maddie
Kiley