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3. Demonstrating intelligible pronunciation:
On the pretest, most of the experimental group students' common errors were
mostly related to the use of stress patterns and intonation. Besides, some errors
related to the use of vowel sounds were identified. Students were not also very
aware that separate words could be linked or assimilated together in pronunciation.
On the posttest, it was noticed that students' pronunciation of English sounds consonants and vowels- improved and students were better able to articulate English sounds. Furthermore, improvements in intonation and stress patterns were noticed. It goes without saying that the study results as well as qualitative observation revealed that the progress achieved in pronunciation was not so deep like other skills. It occurred more in stress and intonation rather than the sound system. This may be due to the fact that pronunciation especially that related to sounds is a skill that requires a long time to be developed. In addition, pronunciation is largely affected by training in the early years of learning the foreign language and this effect can't be altered by training received later on.
However, the progress realized in pronunciation can be attributed to different
factors. Among them was exposing students to authentic samples of spoken
language including all authentic and natural features characterizing everyday
language (hesitancy, pauses, recasting and so on). The texts presented to students
were spoken at a normal rate of speech including real intonation, rhythm, tones and
so on. Throughout consciousness raising exercises, students noticed the
characteristics of the speech stream and the sound system. Students' attention was
also drawn to how sounds are linked in spoken language and how sounds change, as the result of the influence of neighboring sounds (assimilation).
Requiring the students also to plan through determining how they could
pronounce different expressions and how they would vary pronunciation according
to their purpose and feelings was vital. It helped raise students' awareness and drew their attention to accuracy of pronunciation and thus facilitated the use of different
pronunciation features during real online spoken performance.
During the task, the students tested their hypotheses about pronunciation in
real situations. After the task, the students resorted to the teacher to help them plan,
in terms of correct pronunciation, their oral presentations of the task results. Most of the time, students were encouraged to refer to the dictionary to look for correct
pronunciation. Furthermore, the observation of performance during the task helped
students pay attention to their spontaneous on- the spot pronunciation errors.
The self- evaluation conducted at "altering attention balance" stage after the
task, enabled students also to discover their errors by themselves and hence learn
correct pronunciation effectively. In addition, students were allowed to discuss, and suggest alternative realizations of their own and their peers' pronunciation errors. This enhanced their learning and ability to identify and correct errors and hence fostered their pronunciation. Besides, the post task stage included many activities, in which students’ common pronunciation errors during the task, including those resulting from the interference of the mother language were remedied. With respect to different genres, the focus points of pronunciation were
derived from the content of each task. Therefore, students could learn a lot about the pronunciation rules that differed according to the genre, intention of the speaker, and relation between the speaker and listener. In particular, the pronunciation rules addressed in each genre were different and specific. For instance, pronunciation of "question tags" was stressed to help students "express and inquire about personal information", rising intonation to express interest during "exchanging personal information" tasks, and to show politeness in tasks including "asking for permission" or "making requests".
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