Embodied pronunciation training for two phonological features of Swedish

Research has shown that gestures can have beneficial effects on second language (L2) pronunciation acquisition. However, we still do not have a coherent picture of these benefits, because different studies have investigated different gestures, testing either learners’ production (Hoetjes & van Maastricht, 2020; Li & Somlak, 2019; Yuan et al., 2019; Zhang et al., 2020) or perception (Baills et al., 2019; Hirata et al., 2014) but hardly both (Xi et al., 2020), and considering either segmental (Hirata et al., 2014; Hoetjes & van Maastricht, 2020; Li & Somlak, 2019; Xi et al., 2020) or prosodic features (Baills et al., 2019; Yuan et al., 2019; Zhang et al., 2020). Our project aims to investigate whether embodied pronunciation training has beneficial effects on the acquisition of two well-known difficulties for learners of Swedish: a suprasegmental feature, the Swedish complementary length contrast (vila ≠ villa), and a segmental one, the vowel contrast /i/≠/y/. Through two laboratory studies, focusing on one of the two contrasts each, we will investigate adult L2 learners’ production and perception of the above-mentioned features through a pre-/post-/ delayed post-test design, that is, before and after receiving pronunciation instruction with or without gestures. The instruction phase will consist of a video training learners on the given contrast in two or three different conditions (between subjects): no gestures (audiovisual speech only), and one or two gesture conditions, testing one or two different sets of gestures. Additionally, a control group (no training) will be included. The gesture conditions are currently being defined based on interviews conducted with teachers of L2 Swedish. Learners’ production will be assessed through native speaker ratings and acoustic analyses. Perception will be measured using a visual-world eye-tracking experiment, providing a continuous measure of learners’ processing abilities. Preliminary results from the first study about the length contrast will be presented at the conference. These two studies constitute the first part of a five-year project, where the two above- mentioned contrasts will also be investigated in an authentic classroom setting at a later stage.