Takayuki Nagamine

Researching nonnative pronunciation; the effect of ‘seeing’ in L2 speech production research.

The presentation, in which Taka will provide an overview of his research within the theme of ‘the use of technology’, will be in two parts with a break.

In Part 1, he will touch on the use of technology in Phonetics and pronunciation research. Recent technological advancement has enabled researchers and language instructors to ‘visualise’ learners’ pronunciation through techniques such as acoustic analysis, ultrasound tongue imaging and electromagnetic electrographs. Such visual information is crucial in investigating sounds in which there is complex acoustic-articulatory relationships, such as English /l/ and /r/. Taka will provide a hands-on introduction to acoustics and articulation of English /l/ and /r/ produced by Japanese learners of English. (Nagamine, submitted; Nagamine & Suzuki, 2022). Such technology will enable us to better understand what a given learner is doing inside their mouth that may result in being perceived as Japanese-accented English, offering implications for pronunciation teaching.

Part 2 will lead us to discuss the effectiveness of synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) in developing L2 learners’ speaking skills. The global pandemic led language instructors to adapt to a new way of teaching languages without meeting face-to-face. Developing L2 learners’ speaking skills could be challenging in such circumstances, but it has been argued that written-based SCMC could have a positive effect on L2 learners’ speaking skills. In this talk, Taka will introduce some recent findings on the effect of SCMC (Miura & Nagamine, 2021; under review) and writing practice (Nagamine & Miura, 2022) on fluency and accuracy development in L2 speech. Our argument is that investigating the relationships between writing and speaking may be a promising research direction and could offer pedagogical implications for English Language Teaching in Japan.