EFL学生における英語音声習得分析 : 総合的評価と分析的評価による検証

抄録

It is widely acknowledged that pronunciation is a subcomponent of communicative competence (Bachman, 1990; Canale, 1983). Although a body of research documented that the marked foreign accents of L2 (second language) speakers occasionally lead to miscommunication, the effects ofpronunciation learning on L2 speakers have not been fully explored. This study, then, investigates the effects of pronunciation learning of English on Japanese EFL (English as aforeign language) learners. The 76 readings recorded by 38 college students were analyzed in this study. The students tape-recorded a dialog which is designed to diagnose English pronunciation before and after a one-year Phonetics course. Five phonetics instructors rated the readings using a holistic scale and an analytic scale. The analytic scale consisted of 15 items that represent the features of the sound system of General American English (vowels, diphthongs, consonants consonant clusters, aspiration, word stress, sentence stress, rhythm, intonation, weak forms, loudness, ratthempo, smoothness, energy, clarity; from Yoshida, 2005). The results show that after one-year ofpronunciation learning, (1) the pronunciation scores of the learners sign ylcantly increased in both holistic and analytic scoring and (2) the item difficulty changed as learners' pronunciation improved.