As a concept established on MOOC, SPOC has been used by many instructors in universities. Although SPOC-based flipped classroom instructional modes have been applied in many disciplines including English learning in China, no empirical study has tried to disentangle the application of the modes in teaching English pronunciation. This study reports…

In this study, we conduct a longitudinal experiment to explore the effects of adaptive phonetic training on the identification of the English vowels /i/ and /I/ by learners in China. The vowel /i/ in English has a low F1 value, a high F2 value, and a long duration. In contrast, the vowel /i/ has a high F1 value, a low F2 value, and a short…

While phonetic training in laboratory settings has been shown to be helpful for second language (L2) sounds learning in prior studies , it is still open to debate whether a perception- or a production-based approach can better help adults learn L2 sounds in classroom settings. This study aimed to fill this knowledge gap. The participants were…

Since the 1990s, the emphasis on intelligibility as a goal in pronunciation teaching rather than near-native or nativelike competence has been reinforced by the increasing use of English as a lingua franca. The insight of the intelligibility principle has greatly impressed researchers in China's English education, but has "very limited and…

Traditional educational giants and natural language processing companies have launched several artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled digital learning applications to facilitate language learning. One typical application of AI in digital language education is the automatic scoring application that provides feedback on pronunciation repeat outcomes.…

The problem of cognitive overload is particularly pertinent in multimedia L2 classroom corrective feedback (CF), which involves rich communicative tools to help the class to notice the mismatch between the target input and learners' pronunciation. Based on multimedia design principles, this study developed a new multimodal CF model through…

E-storybooks are the most important auxiliary learning materials for English-as-Foreign-Language (EFL) learners. Few studies reported positive results on pronunciation and speech development from using audio accompanied e-storybooks, although audios are expected to play the role of recasts in providing pronunciation feedback for learners.…

[For the complete volume, "CALL and Professionalisation: Short Papers from EUROCALL 2021 (29th, Online, August 26-27, 2021)," see ED616972.]This study investigated whether a translation tool (Microsoft Translator -- MT) and its built-in speech features (Text-To-Speech synthesis -- TTS -- and speech recognition) can promote learners'…

With the advancement of automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology, ASR-based pronunciation assessment can diagnose learners' pronunciation problems. Meanwhile, ASR-based pronunciation training allows more opportunities for pronunciation practice. This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of ASR technology in diagnosing English…

This paper examines whether a web-based training on English discourse intonation leads to better spontaneous speech quality for Mandarin Chinese speakers who reside in the U.S. and in China. The four-week fully online training consisted of meta-instruction videos as well as listening and speaking activities, including instant visual pitch contour…

In recent years, along with the development of Chinese economy, the Chinese government pays more attention to English education in ethnic minority areas. Chinese ethnic minority EFL learners' passion has reached an unprecedented level. Nevertheless, a series of complicated factors affect Chinese ethnic minority EFL learners' English pronunciation…

Though research has shown that rhythmic training is beneficial for phonological speech processing, little empirical work has been carried out to assess whether rhythmic training in the classroom can help to improve pronunciation in a second language. This study tests the potential benefits of hand-clapping to the rhythm of newly learned French…

The traditional focus of English phonetic teaching in China has consistently been on the segmental acquisition, which is mainly highlighting the pronunciation of vowels and consonants, while its suprasegmental knowledge in speech naturalness, coherence and understanding is relatively insufficient. In addition, Chinese students have a serious…

Research on second-language (L2) speech acquisition suggests that audio-visual aids could be effective in helping learners acquire difficult L2 speech sounds (Li, 2016a). However, most previous studies have been restricted to laboratory settings rather than the classroom environment. The present study, therefore, was designed to fill this…

Wall Street English has built online activities that allow students to record phrases and receive word-level Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) driven pronunciation feedback. Students in language centres in China, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, and Italy (N=2,867) used ASR-Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) activities, and some (N=482) completed a…