Englishville: A new way of practising prosody

International audienceDespite evidence that prosody plays an important role in the intelligibility, comprehensibility and accentedness of non-native discourse (Munro & Derwing, 1995, 1998), it is seen as difficult to teach (Setter et al., 2010). One way of making prosody easier to teach and understand is by using a real-time 3D spectrogram such as the one used on the website Englishville (Costille, 2020). Four groups of French students, enrolled in their third year of a BA in English, took part in this experiment. Thirty short sentences focusing on intonation were recorded by a female native British speaker. All participants read and recorded the same phrases as they appeared on the screen and groups 3 and 4 received specific explanations regarding the spectrogram and intonation contours. The first group simply read the phrases (limited input) and recorded their own productions. The other 3 groups received supplementary input: group 2 read the text and heard the corresponding audio recordings (audio input); group 3 read the text and saw the corresponding 3D spectrogram (visual input); and group 4 read the text, heard the audio and saw the corresponding 3D spectrogram (multi-sensorial input). The recordings were then compared in Englishville to the expected intonation pattern and given one point per matching pattern. The results do not show that seeing speech systematically improves students' intonation but did show that the students felt the tool was useful and easy to use.OrProsody plays an important role in the intelligibility, comprehensibility and accentedness of non-native discourse (Munro and Derwing, 1995, 1998). Yet prosody is seen as difficult to teach (Setter et al., 2010). For example, in France, teachers often say that their lack of knowledge/confidence and/or a lack of suitable resources explain their reluctancy to teach it. Previous studies have used software such as PRAAT to visualise pitch (Olson, 2014, Imber et al., 2017, Setter et al., 2010) but they can be found hard to use (Setter et al., 2010; Setter and Jenkins, 2005). We believe a real-time 3D spectrogram such as the one used on Englishville - our websitecome-web app, is both easier to use and to understand. The spectrogram appears in different colours ranging from blue (low intensity) to red (high intensity) and the melodic pattern is also visible.An initial trial experiment, carried out on a small number of French participants specialising in English did not allow any real conclusions to be drawn. However, positive results came from the students’ feedback who found it useful, easy to use, fun and interesting. This encouraged us to set up a second experiment on a larger scale to determine if seeing a 3D spectrogram is not only deemed useful and easy to use but also impacts learners’ productions. Four groups of French students enrolled in their third year of a BA in English took part in this experiment (20 students in total). Recordings were made by a female native British speaker of 72 words to focus on lexical word stress and 30 phrases to focus on intonation. All participants read and recorded the words and phrases as they appeared on the screen and groups 3 and 4 received specific explanation regarding the spectrogram. Each group was given time to familiarize themselves with the tool. The first group only read the words and phrases (limited input), before recording their own productions. The other 3 groups received supplementary input: group 2 read the text and heard the corresponding audio (audio input); group 3 read the text and saw the corresponding 3D spectrogram (visual input) and group 4 read the text, heard the audio and saw the corresponding 3D spectrogram (multi-sensorial input). Participants were asked to imitate what they saw (3D spectrogram – group 3 & 4) or heard (audio – group 2 & 4) as closely as possible. The results are currently being examined and compared to the expected pattern. They will be fully discussed at the conference as will the underlying question of the usefulness of a 3D spectrogram when focusing on prosody