A Passage to being understood and understanding others:

• Main Authors: Tsai, Pi Hua, 蔡碧華
• Other Authors: Yin, Yuen Mei
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/50816661875497452588

博士 === 國立政治大學 === 英國語文學研究所 === 97 === This present study investigated the impact of computer-assisted pronunciation training (CAPT) software, i.e., MyET, on students’ learning of English pronunciation. The investigation foci included the generalization of the effect of practice with the CAPT system. Also examined are the difficulties and challenges reported by the students who employed the CAPT system and the strategy scheme they developed from their interaction with the system. This study aimed to position the role of the CAPT system in the arena of instruction on English pronunciation and to investigate how other kinds of mediation, such as that of peer support, could reinforce its efficacy. This study involved 90 Taiwanese college students, divided into two experimental groups and one control group. The two experimental groups practiced English pronunciation by using a computer-assisted pronunciation training (CAPT) program either independently or with peers while the control group only had access to MP3 files in their practice. All the groups practiced for ten weeks texts adopted from a play, Cinderella, provided by MyET free of charge on line. They all received a pretest and a posttest on the texts they had practiced and a novel text. Each week after their practice with the texts, the participants were asked to write down in their learning logs their reflections on the learning process in Chinese. In the same way, the instructor would provide her feedback on the students’ reflections in the logs every week. The results showed that the ten-week practice with the CAPT system resulted in significant and positive changes in the learning of English pronunciation of CAPT groups (i.e., the Self-Access CAPT Group and the Collaborative CAPT Group). The progress of the participants in intonation and timing was always higher than in segmental pronunciation. Moreover, the ten-week practice with the CAPT system was found to be generalized (though the generalization is less than mediocre) to the participants’ performance in the production of segmental pronunciation and intonation but not in the timing component in reading the novel text. However, the improvement of the CAPT groups was not great enough to differentiate themselves from the MP3 Group. Though the quantitative investigation did not reveal significant group differences, the qualitative analysis of the students’ reflections showed that the learning processes all the three groups went through differed. The Self-Access CAPT Group outperformed the other two groups in developing self-monitoring of language learning and production, and in enjoying working with the CAPT system/texts. Among the three groups, the Collaborative CAPT Group outscored the other two groups in reporting their gains and improvement in fluency, intonation and segmental pronunciation, as well as developing strategies to deal with their learning difficulty. Though the students in the MP3 group also made significant progress after the practice, without peers’ scaffolding and the feedback provided by MyET, they reported the highest frequency of difficulties and the least frequency of gains and strategies during the practice. The participants of this study also considered necessary the improvement of the CAPT system’s feedback design. At the end of the study theoretical and pedagogical implications as well as research limitations are presented. Key words: Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL), Automatic Speech Recognition System (ASRS), segmental pronunciation, prosody, intonation, timing, learning strategies, mediation