The introduction of rhythm instruction in the english as a foreign language classroom to improve the comprehensibility and fluency of english for specific purposes students

Resumen

For the last few decades, teaching pronunciation has regained the interest of researchers as a tool to improve oral production in a second language. Its purpose, however, is not longer focused on training speakers to sound native, but on helping them express themselves effectively. Along these lines, the present study looks into the effectiveness of introducing explicit rhythm instruction in the language classroom to improve the students’ comprehensibility and fluency in English. First-year engineering students attending a technical English course participated in a weekly pronunciation module of ten thirty-minute sessions based on a communicative framework. Participants were divided into an experimental group, which received explicit rhythm instruction, and a control group, which did not. Students were recorded before and after the treatment and their performances were compared to examine their progress. A mixed-method assessment was conducted. First, the VarcoV values and the pauses of the sentences were acoustically analyzed. Second, native English speakers rated the comprehensibility and fluency of the students’ extemporaneous productions. Also, a student satisfaction survey, the teacher’s journal and the video-recorded sessions provided evidence of the implementation of the experiment. The findings reveal differences between group means and significant effect sizes for the acoustic measurements despite general results not always being significant. Also, a ceiling effect is detected in the ratings, which poses some interesting questions regarding the validity of this kind of data. Despite this, the combination of quantitative and qualitative results suggest that explicit instruction in suprasegmental aspects of speech, like rhythm, can be beneficial for all learners and that pronunciation instruction has to be taken into consideration in any English as a Foreign Language context.