Didactic intralingual dubbing as a novel pedagogical tool for enhancing English aspirated plosives in Spanish EFL learners

This study examines the effectiveness of Didactic Intralingual Dubbing (DID) as an innovative technique to enhance Spanish learners’ production of word-initial aspirated English plosives (/p/, /t/, /k/). The lack of aspiration in these consonants, common among Spanish EFL learners, can compromise intelligibility, a key component of successful international communication. A DID-based pedagogical intervention, requiring learners to revoice short video excerpts in the target language, offers an interactive and technology-mediated solution by combining auditory modeling, articulatory focus, and repeated oral practice in context. To assess its impact, a quasi-experimental design was implemented with 71 pre-service teachers divided into an experimental and a control group. Speech samples were obtained at three stages: pre-test, dubbing stage, and post-test. Inter- and intra-group analyses revealed significant gains in all three plosives for the EG, while the CG showed no improvement. Overall, findings support DID as a motivating, effective, and pedagogically innovative tool for short-term pronunciation enhancement.