THE EFFECT OF DELAYED COMPARISON IN THE LANGUAGE LABORATORY ON PHONEME DISCRIMINATION AND PRONUNCIATION ACCURACY

Three separate classes of students of English as a second language were divided into groups matched on measures of pronunciation discrimination and production. One half of the students monitored their previously recorded responses to pronunciation exercises in the language laboratory and the other half received comparable exposure to the contents of these exercises by responding actively a second time. A mobile language laboratory, The Plurilingua, used in this experiment, which permits up to six individuals to record and subsequently monitor their responses on one spool of magnetic tape is described. It was hypothesized that the active groups would show a significantly higher degree of improvement in discrimination accuracy and pronunciation authenticity of English phonemes. At the end of the experiment, no significant effects were found, although there was evidence of a trend which favored the active groups.