John Levis

Southwestern Mandarin is one of the most important modern Chinese dialects, with over 270 million speakers. One of its most noticeable phonological features is an inconsistent distinction between the pronunciation of (n) and (l), a feature shared with Cantonese. However, while /n/-/l/ in Cantonese has been studied extensively, especially in its effect upon English pronunciation, the /l/-/n/ distinction has not been widely studied for Southwestern Mandarin speakers. Many speakers of Southwestern Mandarin learn Standard Mandarin as a second language when they begin formal schooling, and English as a third language later. Their lack of /l/-/n/ distinction is largely a marker of regional accent. In English, however, the lack of a distinction risks loss of intelligibility because of the high functional load of /l/-/n/. This study is a phonetic investigation of initial and medial (n) and (l) production in English and Standard Mandarin by speakers of Southwestern Mandarin. Our goal is to identify how Southwestern Mandarin speakers produce (n) and (l) in their additional languages, thus providing evidence for variations within Southwestern Mandarin and identifying likely difficulties for L2 learning. Twenty-five Southwestern Mandarin speakers recorded English words with word initial (n) and (l), medial <ll> or <nn> spellings (e.g., swallow, winner), and word-medial (nl) combinations (e.g., only) and (ln) combinations (e.g., walnut). They also read Standard Mandarin monosyllabic words with initial (l) and (n), and Standard Mandarin disyllabic words with (l) or (n). Of the 25 subjects, 18 showed difficulties producing (n) and (l) consistently where required, while seven (all part of the same regional variety) showed no such difficulty. The results indicate that SWM speakers had more difficulty with initial nasal sounds in Standard Mandarin, which was similar to their performance in producing Standard Mandarin monosyllabic words. For English, production of (l) was significantly less accurate than (n), and (l) production in English was significantly worse than in Standard Mandarin. When both sounds occurred next to each other, there was a tendency toward producing only one sound, suggesting that the speakers assimilated production toward one phonological target. The results suggest that L1 influence may differ for the L2 and L3.

The study examines how Southwestern Mandarin (SW) speakers pronounce English words with final alveolar nasal or lateral consonants. In addition, the study examines the intelligibility of SW Mandarin speakers' English word reading when heard by non-SW Mandarin Chinese English teachers. Twenty-five SW Mandarin speakers and forty non-SW Mandarin listeners were involved in the study. The results showed that SW Mandarin speakers do not consistently produce either word-final /n/ or /l/, most often deleting the final consonant, although word-final /n/ had a higher pronunciation accuracy rate than word-final /l/. Words that represented the most common mispronunciation, deletion, were played for non-SW Mandarin English teachers who were asked to write down the words that they heard. Results showed that deletions of both final /n/ and /l/ resulted in strong loss of intelligibility, suggesting that final deletions are important for intelligibility in English as a lingua franca interaction.

Contrastive stress, in which words or syllables are emphasized to show their relationship to other words or syllables (e.g., It’s not unknown, it’s well-known), calls attention to how spoken lexical information is highlighted to express explicit and implicit comparisons/contrasts. By doing so, it evokes a set of possible referents and then uses pitch and length to select one referent from the group (Cowles et al., 2007). Although contrastive
stress is common in conversational and planned speech, L2 English learners at all proficiency levels struggle with it, instead emphasizing repeated words (e.g., It’s not unknown, it’s well-known).

Contrastive stress is highly teachable at all levels of instruction and promotes comprehensibility improvement with even modest levels of instruction (Benner, Muller Levis & Levis, 2014; Levis & Muller Levis, 2018; Muller Levis & Levis, 2012). Improvement is evident in controlled and more communicative activities. This teaching tip includes a variety of controlled and communicative activities to teach the production of contrastive stress, including strategies to identify contrasts in written texts, to produce
contrasts in asking about and expressing preferences, to express contrasts using simple pictures, and in using contrasts to correct and disagree.

Reviewers are the largely invisible backbone of a successful journal, giving of their time to help improve the work of other scholars. This paper talks about the role of reviewers, the ways that they help authors, the importance of addressing reviewer comments in the revision process, and the process of publishing. It also provides a call for new reviewers as the field continues to grow, and it provides the criteria used for reviews in JSLP

A recurring question for researchers in any field concerns the best place to submit their research. This is also true of L2 pronunciation research. In this paper, we look at journals that have repeatedly published pronunciation research over the past decade. Publication venues include specialist journals that focus on speech, general second language acquisition and learning journals, regional journals, and newsletters. The first two sets of journals are accompanied by word clouds from their scope and aims statements. The paper encourages authors to consider a number of issues in determining the best places to submit L2 pronunciation research.

Anyone who is interested in the teaching of pronunciation is aware of the Cinderella metaphor. It is one that I have heard many, many times at professional conferences such as International TESOL. But where did the Cinderella image come from? In 1969, L.G Kelly said 'It will be obvious that pronunciation has been the Cinderella of language teaching, largely because the linguistic sciences on which its teaching rests did not achieve the sophistication of semantics, lexicology, and grammar until the 19th century' (p.87). But note the verb tense in Kelly: 'Pronunciation has been the Cinderella of language teaching'. Kelly is saying that pronunciation is no longer the Cinderella but is rather an equal part of the language teaching family. And yet the metaphor did not go away. In 1996, in the first version of Celce-Murcia, Brinton, and Goodwin's book, pronunciation was said to suffer from 'the Cinderella syndrome, kept behind doors and out of sight' (1996, p.323). Even four decades after Kelly, Adrian Underhill said, 'I suggest that pronunciation is the Cinderella of language teaching. It has been neglected and disconnected from other language learning activities' (http://www.adrianunderhill.com/2010/09/22/pronunciation-the-cinderella­of-lanquaqe-teachingl). So it appears that pronunciation practitioners never got the message that pronunciation was Cinderella no more, and the metaphor has continued to have power over how we see ourselves: victimized, neglected, and left at home when everyone else goes to the language-teaching ball.

(Paper available on request)
This issue addresses the intersection of technology and pronunciation, dis- cussing past, current and future uses of technology, the use of technology for researching L2 pronunciation, for training instructors, and for teaching learners. Technology is put forth as an essential and interconnected element of second language pronunciation. The topic grew out of the 8th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching conference, held in August 2016 in Calgary, Alberta.

(Paper available on request)
Second language pronunciation is undergoing dramatic changes in research visibility, in the intelligibility-centered goals that drive the field, and in the ways that technology is being deployed to address new needs. This plenary delineates problems that face the field as it has grown. I suggest the reasons that technology must be a critical part of the future of L2 pronunciation and the ways in which technology use can help to address problems facing future growth. These reasons include providing the support teachers need, individualizing instruction, providing ways to ensure that intelligibility- based instruction adheres to effective goals, combining information in unusual and innovative ways, taking advantage of multi-modality in instruction and delivering varied types of feedback, and researching pronunciation learning and teaching processes.

Knowing how to teach pronunciation is an essential skill for any language teacher. However, English language teachers often report feeling uncertain about or inadequate in teaching pronunciation . Rarely do teachers say they feel inadequate teaching grammar or other language features or skills. But pronunciation is different. This is why it is especially important to consider what makes an effective pronunciation teacher.

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) dates from the early 1970s (Widdowson, 1972; Wilkins, 1972). Its general approach developed from the recognition that teaching language form did not invariably result in success at using language for communication (Berns, 1984; Widdowson, 1972). With the rise of CLT from the early 1970s to the early 1990s came the decline of pronunciation in language teaching. Pronunciation had been a central element of pre-CLT language teaching, but this centrality was lost in the 1970s and beyond. Such a shift raises the question of whether CLT proponents in the early years were deliberately and openly negative toward pronunciation, or was the neglect of pronunciation an unintended consequence of a broad-based paradigm shift in language teaching related to the rise of CLT? It is our contention that the neglect of pronunciation associated with the early CLT era was a result of a paradigm shift in language teaching. In this paper, we first discuss how pronunciation was situated in second language (L2) teaching during the early CLT era (early 1970s-early 1990s). Then we examine what we believe are some of the CLT principles that help explain why pronunciation seemed to decline in importance in early CLT. Next, we show why those same principles led to a renewal of pronunciation’s role starting around the mid-1980s. Following this, we look at the evidence for CLT’s influence from journal articles. Finally, we look at pronunciation-centered ESL classroom textbooks to examine how CLT principles were realized.

We explored using authentic spoken discourse as a source for materials to teach the use of sentence focus illustrating new and given information. Using both examples of academic and non-academic discourse, we found that it was possible to identify examples of new and given information in authentic discourse, but texts that illustrated information stucture unambiguously were rare. We report on two texts and discuss the issues that arose in our analysis, including examples where phrases were spoken with multiple focus words, where speakers used focus to mark spoken contrasts rather than new information, and where anomalous focus placement was hard to describe in terms of ieth the dominant last content word pattern or in terms of information structure. Recommendations for using authentic materials to teach sentence focus are given..

The connection between research and teaching is a central concern of any journal related to language teaching, where there are constant calls to base practice on research.  Such calls, however, overly simplify the tenuous connections between research and teaching while they minimize the complexities of creating a research-based pedagogy.

Parentheticals, information that is not directly relevant to the topic being addressed, appear in all academic lectures and help listeners distinguish important from less important information. Their use is a critical skill for all teachers. Despite their importance, research on parentheticals in teaching is scarce. This chapter explores the instructional discourse of native-English-speaking teaching assistants and international teaching assistants regarding the use of parentheticals, primarily in terms of the intonational and informational patterns they exhibit. Our analysis involved discourse data collected from sixteen classes, eight from chemistry (four taught by native English TAs and four taught by ITAs) and eight from English (also four taught by TAs and four by ITAs). While our study suggested that parentheticals can be used to connect the teacher and students interpersonally, and to break up the density of the lecture, we uncovered interesting differences between TAs and ITAs. Our findings suggest that ITAs may need to learn how to use parentheticals and prosody to break up the density of their lectures. Moreover, by not incorporating parentheticals well, ITAs may come across as unmoving, overly knowledgeable, and even unapproachable. Educators can use these findings to help ITAs better construct a logical hierarchy of information in extended discourse.

(This is a pre-publication copy of this chapter from: Reed, M., & Levis, J., Eds. (2015) The Handbook of English Pronunciation. Wiley Blackwell.)

Connected Speech Processes (CSPs) are the differences from citation pronunciations that occur when words occur in normal spoken discourse. This chapter defines CSPs, explains their functions, provides a new classification for CSPs consisting of six major categories, and reviews research into the perception and production of CSPs. It concludes with suggestions for future research into CSPs.

The use of suprasegmental cues to word stress occurs across many languages. Nevertheless, L1 English listeners&#39; pay little attention to suprasegmental word stress cues and evidence shows that segmental cues are more important to L1 English listeners in how words are identified in speech. L1 English listeners assume strong syllables with full vowels mark the beginning of a new word, attempting alternative resegmentations only when this heuristic fails to identify a viable word string. English word stress errors have been shown to severely disrupt processing for both L1 and L2 listeners, but not all word stress errors are equally damaging. Vowel quality and direction of stress shift are thought to be predictors of the intelligibility of non-standard stress pronunciations—but most research so far on this topic has been limited to two-syllable words. The current study uses auditory lexical decision and delayed word identification tasks to test a hypothesized English Word Stress Erro...

Research on L2 pronunciation needs to occur in a much wider range of languages in order to ensure that findings are not just applicable to dominant languages. This paper argues that research on a wider variety of languages will be valuable for understanding different contexts of learning/instruction, different types and combinations of phonological features, and different instructional approaches. The field especially needs two parallel and interrelated threads of research and teaching-oriented publications. The first is descriptions of and materials for teaching pronunciation in particular languages. The second is research that is built around questions of practical interest and theoretically-motivated models of L2 speech perception and production.

Success in L2 pronunciation learning is affected by both individual differences and social influences on learning. While individual differences have been extensively researched, social influences have not. This study examines the beliefs and attitudes of advanced learners of English in regard to their pronunciation abilities and improvement. Twelve graduate students took part in four weeks of individualized pronunciation tutoring followed by interviews asking about their pronunciation, use of English, and their pronunciation in social contexts. The interviews revealed four images of their pronunciation learning. The first was that their spoken language skills left them feeling pulled in conflicting directions; the second was that they believed that accents could be ‘caught’ (like a cold) from the models around them (whether those models were seen as good or bad); the third concerned the students’ views of accent and identity, which by and large were not seen as connected; and the fourth suggested that they saw themselves as separate from regular social contact in the L2. Each of these images involved contradictory beliefs about the nature of pronunciation improvement and its relationship to social interaction. These beliefs made improvement in pronunciation difficult. It is only by helping learners address these contradictory beliefs that greater pronunciation improvement will be possible.

... Discuss with your partner the three most important things to have when ... 1. you are lost in a city 2. you are on vacation 3. your car breaks down 4. you are lost in the woods Choose words from the box in 13. 16 Report your answers to the rest of the class. Part 1 I Vowels ...

Many types of L2 phonological perception are often difficult to acquire without instruction. These difficulties with perception may also be related to intelligibility in production. Instruction on perception contrasts is more likely to be successful with the use of phonetically variable input made available through computer-assisted pronunciation training. However, few computer-assisted programs have demonstrated flexibility in diagnosing and treating individual learner problems or have made effective use of linguistic resources such as corpora for creating training materials. This study introduces a system for segmental perceptual training that uses a computational approach to perception utilizing corpus-based word frequency lists, high variability phonetic input, and text-to-speech technology to automatically create discrimination and identification perception exercises customized for individual learners. The effectiveness of the system is evaluated in an experiment with pre-and post-test design, involving 32 adult Russian-speaking learners of English as a foreign language. The participants' perceptual gains were found to transfer to novel voices, but not to untrained words. Potential factors underlying the absence of word-level transfer are discussed. The results of the training model provide an example for replication in language teaching and research settings.

Research into pronunciation has often disregarded its potential to inform pedagogy. This is due partly to the historical development of pronunciation teaching and research, but its effect is that there is often a mismatch between research and teaching. This paper looks at four areas in which the (mis)match is imperfect but in which a greater recognition of research can lead to better teaching materials (high variability phonetic training, intonation, information structure, and setting priorities). Furthermore, two areas in which teaching materials are desperate for research to be carried out (connected speech and the primacy of suprasegmentals) will be discussed.

A review by Alice Henderson about the book by Marnie Reed and me

The Handbook of English Pronunciation is a long-awaited, state-of-the-art reference book which will be a valuable resource for language researchers and teachers alike. It provides an authoritative overview of current knowledge in this field and addresses key pedagogical issues. Readers do not need to be experts in pronunciation to benefit from the book, and reading it will bring home to them how " pronunciation influences all research into, and teaching of, spoken language " (2015: xii). The handbook, skilfully edited by Marnie Reed and John Levis, showcases contributions from 37 experts from around the world in 530 pages. The seven-page Introduction includes some candid comments about the challenges of pulling together contributions from a host of authors, countries and approaches, but—given the variety and richness of Englishes around the world—this diversity is one of the book's major strengths. The main body of the book contains 28 chapters organised into six parts, and each of the parts delves into one aspect of English pronunciation: History, Description, Discourse, Major Varieties, Acquisition, and Teaching. In addition to the bibliography at the end of each chapter, the book provides a comprehensive, 10-page Index that makes it easy for readers to rapidly find what interests them—detailed language descriptions, practical classroom information or further reading suggestions. Showing readers where to find further information as their needs and questions evolve is a key feature of any handbook. Finally, Notes on Contributors (2015: vii–xi) provide useful information about the authors. Part 1 of the handbook—The History of English Pronunciation—opens with a chapter by Jeremy Smith, in which he illustrates the process of historical phonology with three case studies: voiced and voiceless fricatives as examples of the development of new phonemic categories, the relation between digraphs and diphthongs, and the causes and consequences of the Great Vowel Shift. Smith's methodological queries and meta-reflections set the tone for

This thesis addresses the question of whether two low-rising contours, the L*LH% and L∗HH% (Pierrehumbert and Hirschberg 1991), should be considered categorical distinctions in Midwestern American English. The status of L*LH% has been questioned by several previous researchers, while the L*HH% has only recently been investigated as an important contour in American English.
The status of the two low-rising contours was investigated through the use of two meaning-based tests. The interpretation of the of L*LH% was compared to that of the fall (H*LL%) and fall-rise (H*LH%), two generally accepted contours, while the interpretation of the L*HH% was compared to the H*HH%, a third accepted contour. Twenty-eight dialogues were recorded. The nucleus of the final utterance of each dialogue (utterances included declaratives, Yes / no questions, and WH questions) was electronically manipulated to produce two or three dialogues differing only in the nuclear tone, resulting in a total of 70 stimuli. Fourteen dialogues were used to compare the interpretations of the L*LH%, H*LL% and H*HH% and fourteen to compare the L*HH% and H*HH%. Forty-seven subjects interpreted the meaning of the final utterances.
Results indicate that neither the of L*LH% nor the L*HH% are clearly categorical. In mixed results, subjects interpreted the of L*LH% as distinct from the H*LL% but not the H*LH%. However, the L*HH% and H*HH% contours were consistently interpreted in the same way on all three grammatical structures examined, indicating that this dialect of English has a single category for a generally high-rising contour.
The results suggest that this dialect of English distinguishes only three of the five contours on the basis of meaning. Furthermore, they suggest that the phonological distinction in English between simple high and low pitch accents (H* vs. L*) is of questionable value for this dialect. A critical evaluation of the value and most appropriate use of meaning-based tests is presented, and the results of intonational research are applied to the teaching of intonation in English as a second language (ESL) textbooks.