抄録
In English as a Foreign Language (EFL) education, addressing intelligibility presents unique challenges, necessitating exploration of interventions aimed at raising phonological awareness. This practical study investigated the effectiveness of instruction on syllable perception among Japanese university students in English pronunciation, with the goal of improving English intelligibility. The study employed different instructional methods to two groups of university freshmen. One group, the Phonological Instruction (PI) group, received instruction that explicitly used linguistic terms such as phoneme and syllable, along with phonemic transcriptions as their representations. The other group, referred to as the non-PI group, was taught without the use of such terminology or phonemic symbols. A total of 38 Japanese EFL students participated in the study. Both groups received 20 minutes of instruction per week over seven weeks in their first semester. They counted syllables in nonwords before and after instruction. A generalized linear mixed model was conducted to examine the effects of the two types of instruction. Despite the absence of significant effects observed between pre- and post-interventions regardless of the instruction type, this study may be considered an innovative endeavor to address challenges in Japanese university English education, particularly in the domain of pronunciation instruction.
