The CATESOL Journal

Pronunciation is challenging for many international students, but particularly important for those going onto college and university level studies where they need to do professional presentations. According to the Institute of International Education [IIE] (2020), California hosted 160,592 students in 2019/2020, and is one of the top destinations for internationals seeking education in the U.S. (IIE, 2020). Given the large number of international students entering California universities each year, viable methods of teaching pronunciation are essential. The authors of this paper undertook a pilot study focused on improving the comprehensibility of English learner pronunciation via raising awareness of underlying prosodic nuances of English. Seven international student participants took part in the study. The authors relied on a noticing-reformulation technique to raise the participants' awareness to prosodic features (Smith & Beckman, 2005). Audacity 2.1.2 (Audacity Team, 2020) and WASP 1.54 (Huckvale, 2013) were also utilized for audiovisual feedback. To collect data, the authors used a pretest-treatment-posttest methodology. Two non-expert raters conducted a blind analysis of the pretest and posttest impromptu speeches. Additional data was collected from the observations of the classroom teacher. The student participants also provided data by responding to a questionnaire and then elaborating on their responses in a subsequent focus group. The results of the study showed some notable results related to intonation. Furthermore, the participants themselves greatly valued the training on thought groups because it gave them an understanding of how to use slight pausing and intonation to chunk thoughts at natural "phrasal breaks" (Celce-Murcia, Brinton, & Goodwin, 2010). This process helped them to regulate the speed and flow of their speech. The positive reactions of the participants encouraged the classroom teacher to continue using the approach for subsequent classes.