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1

Developing a Pronunciation Computer Program for the Acquisition of English Phonemes and Word Stress

100%

Hong J.-N., Yang J. H.

Research in Language

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2017

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vol. 15

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issue 4

325-352

EN

This study devised a pronunciation computer program to examine whether mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) could facilitate college students’ acquisition of English phonemes and word stress. Thirty-eight participants enrolled in the remedial English class offered at the language center of a national technological university in central Taiwan. Before the class, they were asked to read a word list. In the following six weeks, they were taught to distinguish and articulate English phonemes and to predict word stress locations using the designed computer program. They were also instructed to review the learning materials using the smart-phone version of the devised program. After the teaching session, each participant was asked again to read the same word list and fill out an assessment questionnaire. The sound analyses show that their readings of English minimal pairs and word stress placement were more accurate than their performances before the instruction. Their responses to the questionnaire indicate that both the given instruction and the designed computer program were satisfactory. In the open-ended questions, some of them said that they have built up a better understanding of phonemes and word stress, and that they would try to predict polysyllabic word stress when reading English articles. The present findings can be further applied to research on MALL-based English pronunciation acquisition.

2

Hypotheses of Natural Phonology

88%

Donegan P., Stampe D.

Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics

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2009

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vol. 45

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issue 1

1-31

EN

Natural Phonology characterizes production and perception of speech in terms of a set of universal phonetically motivated phonological processes. Before their first words, infants identify some processes as inapplicable in their language, which narrows their perceptual universe to its phonemic system and enables them to hear the intention rather than the actuation of speech. They then gradually inhibit the inapplicable processes to achieve mature pronunciation. If some inhibitions are not fully mastered, the child's speech seems to have a sound change, or perhaps a variable pronunciation, or a speech deficit. Processes that remain active govern allophony, variation, automatic alternations, one's native "accent", and one's "foreign" accent in second-language learning. Inactive processes may (re-)emerge to cope with stresses like injury or fatigue. This paper surveys some of the principal hypotheses of Natural Phonology, and we briefly compare them with Optimality Theory and recent neo-empiricist phonology. We argue that abstraction from actions to intentions is fundamental to learning and understanding language at every level from phonetics to pragmatics.

3

On Writing and Handwriting

51%

Kučera M.

Journal of Pedagogy

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2010

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vol. 1

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issue 2

11-28

EN

Writing is often considered secondary to the spoken language, as it is only coded sound-by-sound. But other scholars have demonstrated that writing is similar to ‘arithmetic’: a cognitive structuring, a shift to the meta-level (‘for the eye’). Handwriting (referred to here as the cursive writing in the sense of joined up handwriting, of ‘écriture liée’) differs from writing (in the first analysis): it has its own grammar composed of paradigmatic gestemes and tracemes and its own syntagmatic rules that connect them. In emotional terms, handwriting is designed to provide a special pleasure by its own drive (instinct, ‘Trieb’). But there is also cognitive aspect to it: the rapidity and fluidity of a cursive writing could be (in professional writing, for instance) more important (at the climax of the creative process) than it being legible for all eternity. The project of the new handwriting reform for Czech schools, abolishing the liaison between letters, is shown to be a modern and technically simplified form of calligraphy.

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1 Journal of Pedagogy

1 Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics

1 Research in Language

1 Donegan P.

1 Hong J.-N.

1 Kučera M.

1 Stampe D.

1 Yang J. H.

1 2017

1 2010

1 2009

Developing a Pronunciation Computer Program for the Acquisition of English Phonemes and Word Stress

Hypotheses of Natural Phonology

On Writing and Handwriting