To study phonetics instruction quantitatively, a survey approach would probably be most effective. I would need to design specific questions, using a Likert scale, about how often teachers do certain things: teach phonetics explicitly, give oral proficiency evaluations, correct students' pronunciation in class, engage the class in dialogues and skits, and make distinctions between similar sounds ("vu"[past participle of the verb "to see"] and "vous" [you, formally]) just as a few examples. To acquire more information about specific strategies teachers use, I would need to conduct several interviews at various age levels (elementary, middle, and high school) and class observations.
This study might also lend itself to a correlational approach. The amount and types of phonetic instruction could serve as one variable, while scores on an oral proficiency exam would be another variable. If a relationship were established, I could use the amount and quality of phonetics instruction to predict scores on the oral proficiency exam. I would either need to design my own evaluation or get ideas from an existing one, such as the OPI (a telephone interview with a native speaker that is judged on many criteria, including pronunciation). To create a more valid study, I would first need to establish reliability by having several judges score the exams.
Of course, this topic is still somewhat broad, and I need to narrow down exactly how I will define phonetics instruction. Clearly, greater phonetics instruction will predict greater phonetic achievement, so I need to look specifically at how and why certain approaches might work better than others. To accomplish this, interviews and observations seem most appropriate though quantitative methods can certainly be valuable throughout the research process. Thus, it is really a balance between two approaches, in which they should complement each other.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Excellent thoughts, Robbie. You are correct that you could do a survey of some sort to determine how and how much teachers teach phonetics. And I agree that your best data source might be interviews and observations....
You probably would not be able to get OPI scores to relate to teaching methods....
Interesting topic, Robbie. I see that several of us in the Foreign Language group are interested in the oral parts of second language learning.
You may want to think about how much instructors integrate any sort of formal linguistic theories to teach French phonology. You could ask instructors this in any interviews that you conduct.
An interesting question would be how to evaluate the achievement or progress of the French pronunciation of the students. As it's likely that each instructor has his own particular assessment, you may have to record/observe and evaluate student pronunciations yourself if your goal is to measure types of instruction versus achievement.
Wow! It seems like you are almost ready to go. I am envious of how together your topic seems to be. Even though like you said, it is still broad, I like how initially you are looking at the many factors because I think that's an important step in finding what you really want to be looking at closely. I also think it's great that through the course of your research you will probably find information and be able to draw conclusions that will actually be helpful to you in your instruction of phonetics in the future.
Post a Comment