The impact of abdominal enhancement techniques on L1 Spanish, Japanese and Mandarin speakers’ English pronunciation
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Michael Yeldham
Abstract
Research by this author found abdominal enhancement techniques can address difficulties in Mandarin and Cantonese speakers’ English pronunciation by helping them: (1) maintain long vowel/diphthong sounds for their required duration; and (2) adequately voice fricative consonants. This current study aimed to further understand the impact of these techniques, chiefly on learners from other L1s who also characteristically find these areas of pronunciation problematic. Consequently, I charted the progress of a Spanish speaker and a Japanese speaker as they were taught the techniques in an English pronunciation course. A cohort of Mandarin speakers from the same course was additionally examined. This was partly for comparability purposes with the Spanish and Japanese speakers, but also because some new areas of learner response to the techniques were examined in the study that had not previously been examined for Mandarin speakers. Following the instruction, I was also able to examine the Spanish and Mandarin speakers one year later to check for further progress. The study found the learners from the three L1s responded to the techniques in different ways, and often for apparently different reasons. Consequently, tentative theoretical claims regarding the techniques’ impact on such learners were developed, along with preliminary instructional guidelines.
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Supplementary Material
This article contains supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/iral-2022-0159).
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- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
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- Comprehension of English articles by Korean learners of L2 English and L3 Spanish
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- The combined effects of a higher-level verb distribution and verb semantics on second language learners’ restriction of L2 construction generalization
- Insights from an empirical study on communicative functions and L1 use during conceptual mediation in L2 peer interaction
- On the acquisition of tense and agreement in L2 English by adult speakers of L1 Chinese
