Shadowing for pronunciation development: Haptic-shadowing and IPA-shadowing

Abstract

Shadowing was introduced to foreign language teaching in the 1990s and since then it has been researched in EFL teaching contexts. Shadowing has been used as a listening task, and its effectiveness on listening comprehension has been acknowledged. However, its effect on pronunciation development remains unclear. With this unresolved issue in mind, I have attempted to develop shadowing-based pronunciation teaching methods by combining shadowing with activities for pronunciation skill development, namely haptic-shadowing and IPA-shadowing. A total of 58 Japanese second-year university students participated in the experiment (29 for haptic-shadowing and 29 for IPA-shadowing). A total of 15 lessons were given to each group. The results show that the haptic-shadowing group statistically improved on all the three features of comprehensibility, segmental features, and suprasegmental features, while the IPA-shadowing group improved on comprehensibility and segmental features. Additionally, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted to examine learners‟ perceptions toward the two types of shadowing. Learners have a more positive and fresh image of haptic-shadowing and IPA-shadowing.