Using social media to help Spanish speakers improve word and sentence stressthe case of Facebook and YouTube

Resum

In the past few decades, pronunciation teaching has been a neglected skill in ESL/EFL classrooms (Elliott, 1995; Kelly, 1969). This is of course a problem as learning both segmental and supra-segmental aspects of a new language is vital to successful communication (Celce-Murcia, Brinton, and Goodwin, 2010). Various reasons have been identified to explain why pronunciation has suffered a Cinderella existence in recent years such as a lack of quality materials, insufficient teacher training, and poorly designed curricula forced onto teachers by school boards or principals (Henderson et al., 2012). One solution to these problems could be to take parts of the pronunciation teaching out of the classroom and allow learners to work independently online at a time of their choosing. To investigate two possible avenues for doing so, this thesis explores the applicability of two popular social media platforms (Facebook and YouTube) in teaching specific aspects of English supra-segmental phonology. These platforms have been used to teach other aspects of English linguistics with writing receiving more attention than any other skill. However, very few studies have focused on pronunciation, and those that have, have looked solely at student perceptions and therefore failed to gauge the effectiveness of the training provided. Thus, in the two studies presented in this thesis, applicability was measured through students’ ability to learn the given rules, their improvement from pre- to post-test as well as the students’ evaluation of the course in the post-test questionnaire. For the two studies, a total of 147 participants were recruited and divided into two experimental groups and a control group which served as control group for both studies. The experimental participants took part in a four-week training course delivered through the aforementioned social media platforms. Depending on the study they participated in, the participants were tasked with learning either word stress rules (Facebook) or sentences stress rules (YouTube). The two courses had the same structure with videos being posted on the Monday and Thursday of each of the first three weeks and with the last week used for additional practice. The topic of the word stress rules were compound nouns describing placenames, food and ingredients or OBJECT/AGENT relationships (e.g. ‘bricklayer’). The sentences stress rules dealt with three types of non-final tonicity, namely objects of general reference, event sentences, and contrasts. Both courses used dialogues with textually enhanced audio scripts as the main tool for helping the participants notice the stressed words in the dialogues (Sharwood Smith, 1993). Although not all results were statistically significant, the results of both studies generally show that the experimental participants improved from pre-test to post-test in their ability to identify and produce either word or sentence stress correctly. This was a surprising finding in the sense that the studies also found that many of the participants failed to accurately state the rules that had been presented to them on the course. Instead, the results seem to indicate that simply working with the materials improved the participants’ perception and subconscious control of the language despite not teaching them the rules. In order to evaluate the viability of using social media for English pronunciation teaching, the participants were asked to fill out a post-test questionnaire in which they rated several aspects of the course and could give recommendations for improvements. The participants’ responses were very encouraging indeed as the vast majority of participants stated that they found the course useful. However, a small tendency was observed for participants in both studies to favour YouTube as a mode of delivery. Implications of the test results and questionnaire responses are discussed.