Tanja Angelovska

University of Salzburg, Austria

When a psycholinguist enters the multilingual classroom: Bridging the gap between psycholinguistics and pronunciation teaching

Abstract


In the last decades, psycholinguists and teachers have tussled with several challenging questions about the acquisition and teaching of L2 pronunciation: How is L2 pronunciation acquired? (How) is L2 pronunciation taught (most effectively)? Our knowledge about the answers to these questions has increased enormously. Likewise, there is evidence that the interest in and the quality of L2 pronunciation teaching has also increased considerably (cf. Lee, Jang and Plonsky, 2015). Yet, there is a general agreement that both psycholinguists and teachers experience more difficulties when it comes to dealing with learners who already use two languages daily (cf. Angelovska, 2019) and approach the task of acquiring the pronunciation of a target third language (L3). L3 learners are different from L2 learners as the former possess a larger repertoire of (meta)linguistic knowledge about pronunciation and phonological awareness about all prior languages (cf. Angelovska, 2018). The three (or more) sound systems, the potential sources for transfer, their type and direction and the various code-switching practices (cf. Heredia and Altarriba, 2001) challenge the outcomes of the L3 pronunciation learning and teaching process. Hence, some additional questions arise for both researchers and teachers: Is the phonetic similarity between the prior languages a trigger for morphosyntactic transfer in third or additional language acquisition? To what extent can psycholinguistic research results shape the practice of pronunciation teaching?
The goal of this talk is to bridge the gap between these current fields by synthesizing existing psycholinguistic evidence. I will first briefly outline what we have and what we lack, then I will address some of the several burning questions from a psycholinguistic perspective and conclude by outlining possible implications for pronunciation teaching in multilingual classrooms.

References


Angelovska. T. (2018). Cross-linguistic awareness of adult L3 learners of English: a focus on metalinguistic reflections and proficiency. Language Awareness, 27, 135–152.https://doi.org/10.1080/09658416.2018.1431243Angelovska, T. (2019). Instructed L3 Acquisition of English. In J. I. Liontas (Ed.), TESOL encyclopedia of English language teaching. Hoboken. NJ: Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118784235.eelt0957Heredia, R. R. and Altarriba, J. (2001). Bilingual language mixing: Why do bilinguals code-switch? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 10, 164–168. https://doi.org/10.1111%2F1467-8721.00140Lee, J., Jang, J., and Plonsky, L. (2015). The effectiveness of second language pronunciation instruction: A meta-analysis. Applied Linguistics, 36, 345–366. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amu040

Bio

Tanja Angelovska is an Associate Professor for English Linguistics and Language Teaching at the University of Salzburg. Her research areas include psycholinguistics and L2/ L3 acquisition with a focus on input processing. She has generated funding for research projects from grant institutions such as German Academic Exchange Service, Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Leverhulme Trust, Ludwig Maximilians Excellence Fund, the Bavarian Research Alliance and the Austrian agency for international mobility and cooperation in education, science and research (ÖÄD). She has led and been involved in several projects investigating the acquisition, processing and use of English as a second and third language across various age groups and language combinations. She is associate member of the CAROLE (Centre for Research and Outreach in Language Education) at the University of Greenwich, Associate Member of the Centre for Applied Research and Innovation in Language Sciences and Education (CARILSE) at the University of Portsmouth and Associate Member of the Language Acquisition, Multilingualism, & Cognition (LAM-C) Laboratory, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada. She has published inLanguage Awareness and International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, and she is co-author of Second Language Acquisition: A Theoretical Introduction to Real World Applications (2016).

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