The impact of audio-synchronised keyword captions on young CLIL learners’ foreign language pronunciation

The effect of multimodal input on foreign language (L2) pronunciation with young learners (YLs) constitutes an underresearched niche. The present study analysed the effect of audio-synchronised keyword captions (ASKEC) on young CLIL learners’ (ages 8-9) L2 receptive and productive pronunciation. It also examined whether results are mediated by the lexical frequency level, and frequency of occurrence of the items under study. Participants were randomly assigned to two experimental viewing modes: (a) an ASKEC group (n = 16) where target items included ASKEC, and (b) an uncaptioned group (n = 17). The pre-tests, post-tests and delayed post-tests comprised a phonological judgement task and an oral production task, including 20 target items and 20 distractors. The results of the phonological judgement task revealed no significant improvements for either group. Conversely, significant improvements were detected for both groups in the oral production task, for both the target items and the distractors. A significant effect was observed for lexical frequency level, while no effect was detected for frequency of occurrence. These findings suggest that ASKEC might not provide a significant advantage for YLs’ pronunciation over uncaptioned audiovisual viewing. The implicit focus on pronunciation during the phonological judgement task might explain the improvement in the oral production task.