Smartphones, WhatsApp, and Audacity: Pronunciation Enhanced

By Juan Soto-Franco, English Department Adjunct Lecturer Hostos Community College, Fall 2020

Intro

After teaching EFL (English as a Foreign Language) in the Dominican Republic for more than a dozen years and ESL (English as Second Language) in the United States for more than five years, the researcher realized that most beginner and intermediate Dominican students tend to make the same pronunciation mistakes here and there. Part of the mispronounced phonemes include /d3/ vs. /j/ as in Jong vs. young; /b/ vs. /v/ as in best vs. vest; /m/ vs. /n/ as in same vs. sane; /θ/ vs. /t/ as in three vs. tree; epenthetic /ε/ as in Spanish, speak; and /ɔ/ as in autograph.

His experience, observation of mobile devices’ proliferation, and the use of mobile applications motivated him to carry out this classroom research. This research included Dominican participants who used their smartphone to record six statements and WhatsApp to share their audio files. The researcher utilized

Audacity (an audio recording and editing software) to edit the audio files. The goal was to help participants enhance their pronunciation in English.

Brief Literature Review

Using smartphone features regularly is so ubiquitous that it has become second nature. Consequently, incorporating them into our language learning process along with the right coaching/advise should result in a familiar activity that benefits learners. According to dos Pereira (2018), “utilizando as ferramentas à que estão expostos diariamente, poderiam adquirir o conhecimento de forma a aprimorar sua produção escrita e oral em Língua Inglesa…” (p. 505). [utilizing the tools that they [students] are exposed to daily, they can acquire knowledge and refine their written and oral production in the English language… (my translation)]. Furthermore, Andújar-Vaca & Cruz-Martínez (2017) added that “…through authentic interaction and feedback, Voice-based MMC [Mobile-mediated Communication] constitutes a powerful tool for developing second language speaking proficiency” (p. 50). These authors support the idea that the use of MMC along with feedback certainly helps in the development of second language speaking skills.

Hypotheses

• Participants will improve their pronunciation after recording the statements, listening to the feedback, and practicing their mispronounced phonemes
• Participants would be willing to adapt the practice model utilized in this project

Methodology

• Participants

Six Dominican Republic (DR) natives living in Santo Domingo (2) and La Vega (2), and in the Bronx, New York (2) participated in this mini-pronunciation project.

They were young learners in intermediate level of English. They freely agreed to participate after their respective instructors spoke and explained to them the purpose of this project.

• Instruments

To conduct this study, the researcher utilized two specific instruments to collect data. One the was participant’s smartphone, and the other instrument was a Google Forms survey with six questions (five Likert scale style and one open- ended). The former questions collected participants’ level of difficulty in reading the statements and understanding the researcher’s feedback. The latter questions aimed to determine students opinion about the technique the researcher utilized to give them feedback. The last two questions inquired about their willingness to participate or recommend other students to participate in similar projects. As

secondary instruments, students used the mobile application called WhatsApp and the researcher utilized Audacity (an audio recorder and editor).

Procedure

Based on the observation that most Dominican English language learners tend to fail to pronounce certain phonemes (read introduction above), the researcher purposefully made up six statements that recreated such linguistic environment. They are as follows: 1. My friend Jong is very young. 2. Vanessa has a beautiful TV. 3. After the accident, she is not the same sane person. 4. Hey, they’re thinking we’re sinking. 5. I see Steven can speak Spanish. 6. The author is signing autographs in the restaurant. With these statements ready, the researcher contacted three colleagues (two in the DR and one in the Bronx) and explained to them the idea behind the project via email. They agreed and spoke with their students, who freely agreed to participate. Participants received the statements

above via email. Next, they used their smartphone to record them; after that, they shared the audio files with the researcher via WhatsApp. Once the audio files were received, the researcher uploaded them to Audacity and listened to them to determine where pronunciation improvement was needed. Wherever there was

a mispronunciation, the researcher inserted his intervention, which consisted of recording this command, “Please repeat!” The command was followed by the word with the correct pronunciation and a blank space or pause for participants to repeat the recorded word. The word was inserted again with its respective blank space or pause for practice. Once the new recording was finished, the researcher sent it back to the students for practice via WhatsApp. After they practiced the words, they re- recorded the same sentences and sent them back to the researcher for verification. Finally, a Google Forms survey with six questions was sent to the participants via email to collect their feedback about the pronunciation project.

Results, Analysis and Conclusion

Table 1 below (columns left to right) illustrates the participant’s name, original audio file, the edited audio file, and the number of mispronounced words. While it is true that in most of the cases there were three mispronounced words or less, it is also worth noting that in the other two cases there was a total of six and 14 mispronounced words, respectively.

Table 1: Participants original and edited audio files with the number of corrections

The first five questions on the questionnaire were Likert scale style and the sixth one was open-ended. The charts below illustrate the different responses given by the participants. The last question includes a summary of their opinions.

Fig. 1: Difficulty level to pronounce the sentences

Figure 1 above illustrates participants’ responses regarding their difficulty in pronouncing the sentences they recorded. Most of them responded that they found it “Very easy” and “Easy.” Their combined total was 100%.

Fig. 2: Difficulty level to understand the researcher’s feedback

When asked about the difficulty of understanding the researcher’s feedback, all participants (100%) stated that it was “Very easy” (Figure 2).

Fig. 3: Helpfulness of researcher’s feedback

The third question asked participants if the feedback technique utilized by the researcher to help them enhance their pronunciation was helpful. They all (100%) responded “Very helpful” (Figure 3).

Fig. 4: Willingness to participate in future project

Fig. 5: Recommending others to participate

Figures 4 and 5 above show that participants are not only willing to participate in future projects like this, but also, they are willing to recommend other students to do it. Participants unanimously agreed 100% on their responses to both questions.

The last question on the survey asked participants to say what they thought about the project. Overall, their responses show that they enthusiastically found it helpful for their English pronunciation enhancement.

Moreover, participants are willing to participate again and recommend this project to other students because they noticed how beneficial this activity was. Below is a list of their direct quotes to Question 6.

• Helpful!
• From my point of view, this project was very good and helpful to improve my pronunciation.
• I think It was very helpful, I liked It and I think that It could be done more frequently mainly with those students who are starting the career to help them to improve their pronunciation.
• Helpful!
• It was really good because it helped improve my technique when I’m [I am] talking [speaking] in English.
• These projects have good benefits, since it helps to understand the complexity and at the same time how simple the understanding, pronunciation and technicalities of English can be.

The results of this classroom research show that by using current technologies such as smartphones, WhatsApp and Audacity, participants can improve their pronunciation skills when intervention and good feedback are given to them. One aspect worth mentioning is that this asynchronous modality to assist participants in their pronunciation skills lends itself to the current times in which we live. That is, they were able to record the statements, send the audio files and later practice the corrected phonemes at their own time and place. The two hypotheses above were confirmed as participants expressed that they found this project helpful and

improved their pronunciation skills. They also mentioned that they would be willing to participate and recommend other students to participate in a similar project.

Recommendations

Founded on the results expressed by the participants, this researcher makes three recommendations: One, a follow-up study with a larger sample size is recommended. Two, Dominican students from the five boroughs of New York and more provinces from the Dominican Republic should be included. And three, other phonemes that might be identified by the researcher to offer students an ampler opportunity to improve the pronunciation of the English language should be included.

Contributors

• Prof. José Luis Reyes, Adjunct Lecturer at Bronx Community College (BCC) English Department and his students
• Prof. Berlina Henríquez, Assistant Professor at Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (UASD) English Department and her students
• Prof. Heidy Fernández, English Instructor at Universidad Católica del Cibao (UCATECI) Linguistics Department and her students

References

Andújar-Vaca, A., & Cruz-Martínez, M.-S. (2017). Mobile-Instant Messaging: WhatsApp and its Potential to Develop Oral Skills. Comunicar, 50(15). 43-

52. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1168743.pdf

dos Pereira, C., Idalgo, L., & Dutra, A. (2018). O WhatsApp como ferramenta para a prática oral e escrita em

língua inglesa. Brazilian English Language Teaching Journal, 9(2), 492-507.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15448/2178-

3640.2018.2.31140