A case study ： a preliminary report on the effects of English pronunciation training on the use of pitch in the reading and the story telling task

Abstract

The present article presents a preliminary report on a case study of two adult Japanese learners of English learning to improve their English pronunciation ability through a pronunciation training program. They were specifically trained on the use of prosody (i.e., pitch, duration and intensity) to differentiate stressed and unstressed syllables in words, phrases and sentences. The results of four diagnostic tests showed that the participants were able to improve the ability to use a wider pitch range to mark stressed syllables. Some individual differences were observed, however, as two participants differed in the way improvement occurred at different task conditions （i.e., the reading task and the story telling task). Suggestions regarding some current issues on effectiveness of pronunciation training are discussed.