Measuring the Effects of Pronunciation Pedagogy

The purpose of this paper is to show the effects of pedagogical pronunciation training on the English vowel length of Japanese EFL speakers. Many studies of English have claimed that vowel length is one of the most important features to consider in the pronunciation of the target language. However, there has been little research on Japanese EFL speakers ’ values. The following hypothesis is examined: “After training, Japanese EFL speakers will have greater differences in vowel length before voiced vs. voiceless stops than they had before training. ” As an effect of pedagogical pronunciation training, the Japanese EFL speakers will approximate the vowel length values of the native English speakers more than they did before training. The findings are useful for the development of language teaching, especially for Japanese learners of English, by applying this pedagogical training to pronunciation teaching