Development and application of a corpus-based online pronunciation learning system for Chinese learners of English

In this project, a corpus-based pronunciation learning system was established to help learners, teachers, and researchers to (1) identify Hong Kong and mainland Chinese learners’ recurrent segmental and suprasegmental difficulties in learning English pronunciation, and (2) and enhance intra- and inter-cultural communication. The phonological corpus contains roughly 12 hours of recorded data from two speech tasks (reading-aloud and interview) performed by Hong Kong and mainland college students. The phonological annotations of the recordings mainly focused on three areas of segmental features (vowels, consonants, and syllable structures) and four areas of supra-segmental features (lexical stress, pausing, linking, and intonation). Apart from the corpus, a pronunciation-learning website was developed for learners to (1) discover the possible causes of common pronunciation features spotted in the corpus, (2) practice segmental and suprasegmental aspects of pronunciation through a variety of perception and production exercises, and (3) learn basic sound analysis techniques via a Praat beginners’ manual developed by the research team. In this paper, the use of learner corpora in two levels of teacher training courses in the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd) will also be introduced and discussed. Copyright © 2016 Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University.