Pronunciation instruction, learner awareness and development

This study investigates the growth in phonological awareness and the speech development of 8 adult Mandarin speakers during an 8-week ESL pronunciation course focused on prosody. In addition to documenting instruction during the course, the study further examines participants' self-reported exposure to English and independent pronunciation practice.;The course centered on intonation and stress. Most activities were teacher-centred, listen and repeat exercises, with a focus on individual production. Participants reported more awareness of the need to both stress and reduce words to achieve rhythm, the need to link words, and to employ a wider range of intonation. Participants also reported that they had been unaware of how syllables are stressed, how phrasing is indicated by pitch changes and how gestures are culturally based. Participants demonstrated individual attentional orientations and revealed different levels of awareness: noticing, reporting the rule, and reporting use of the rule in context.;Linguistic analysis showed little speech change across time for the group as a whole. Intonation ratings revealed a slight positive trend, although conclusions are limited by low intonation rater agreement at T2. Five of the eight participants reported improved English comprehension, and it is probable that perception improved before production. Those with more exposure to English tended to perform better than those with less. Results strongly suggest that explicit teaching in conjunction with meta-linguistic discussion raise awareness of phonological form. Overall the findings suggest that prosody is worth teaching, but a limited number of participants in a unique teaching context limit the generalizability of the findings.;Classroom observation data were gathered using field notes and an activity checklist. Retrospective interview data were collected weekly concerning participants' noticing of phonological forms, and participants' independent practice and exposure to English. Interview data were analyzed qualitatively to identify learners' areas of focused attention and how their attention was employed in applying their new prosodic knowledge. Speech samples were taken before (T1), immediately after (T2), and 2 months after the course (T3). These samples were analyzed linguistically for segments, speech rate, dysfluencies and sentence stress. Holistic ratings by two experienced ESL teachers were used to evaluate intonation.