Getting the Biggest Bang for Your Buck Maddie Kiley, Douglas Margolis, & Amara Treuenfels University of Wisconsin—River Falls 1

Pronunciation Research Step One Task Design Speech Samples Step Two Rating Scale Ratings of Speech Samples Step Three Transcription Coding & Analysis 2 RQ1: What are the most frequent pronunciation issues of Korean and Taiwanese ELLs? RQ2: What factors most contribute to naïve listeners’ ratings? RQ3: Does task type affect performance and ratings?

Step One: Tasks  Description  Narration  Script 3

Collection of Speech Samples 4 GenderAge Study Abroad English Practice Years English Study MaleFemale< 23>24YesNo Private Tutor Language Institute Mean (SD) Taiwanese (2.54) Korean (2.66)

Step Two: Rating Raters N = 17 3 Males 14 Females Ages 20 – 28 (Mean = 24, SD = 2.34) All studied a 2nd language 14 had international travel experience 5

Step Two: Overall & Complexity Ratings – Inter-Rater Reliability 6

Fluency & Comprehensibility Inter-Rater Reliability 7

Step Three: Transcription 8 Reliability Analysis Task 2 Agreement = 92.4% Task 3 Agreement = 97.3%

Findings 9 TaiwaneseKorean Pauses Filled Pauses39.3 Grammar169.5 Total Words Words per Second

Most Frequent Pronunciation Errors 10

Years of Study on Fluency & Comprehensibility 11

Pronunciation Errors on Fluency 12

Grammar Errors on Fluency 13

Implications & Limitations  For assessing oral tasks, the length and total word count should be taken into consideration.  Specific attention to interdental phonemes would be beneficial for both populations.  Koreans tend to articulate each phoneme, whether accurate or inaccurate.  Taiwanese diversity of pronunciation errors was over 50% larger than that of the Koreans. This suggests that whole-group pronunciation discussion would be more beneficial to Korean students.  Years of Study had the greatest effect on Fluency and Comprehensibility Ratings  Grammar errors appear to NOT impact fluency ratings  Task does make a difference 14

For more information Doug Margolis Dept of English: TESOL Program University of Wisconsin-River Falls River Falls, WI Office: Amara Treuenfels  15  Maddie Kiley