Effect of Acoustic Spectrographic Instruction on production of English /i/ and /I/ by Spanish pre-service English teachers

This study investigates the effects of Acoustic Spectrographic Instruction on the production of the English phonological contrast /i/ and / I /. Acoustic Spectrographic Instruction is based on the assumption that physical representations of speech sounds and spectrography allow learners to objectively see and modify those non-accurate features in their oral production which may impede effective communication in the target language. Twenty-six pre-service non-native English teachers, 16 in the experimental group and 10 in the control group, participated in the investigation. During a two-week period, the experimental group received Acoustic Spectrographic Instruction while the control group was exposed to a more traditional pronunciation approach. Production accuracy of the target segments was evaluated by two production tasks and a perceptual identification task. Acoustic measurements from the production tasks show that Acoustic Spectrographic Instruction significantly improved pronunciation of both vowels. Data from perceptual identification also indicate pronunciation improvement of both vowels, particularly for English / I /. Taken together, the results of these three experiments lend support to the use of acoustic features of speech and spectrography in English segmental acquisition.