Pronunciation is usually one of the biggest difficulties that second language (L2) learners meet. One of the helpful teaching strategies and resources that previous research has identified, is the use of gestures. However, exactly how and why such embodied training can be helpful is still unclear.

This study investigates the potential effects of embodied pronunciation training on the acquisition of the Swedish complementary length contrast (vila ≠ villa), a well-known difficulty for L2 learners of Swedish: In Swedish, a stressed syllable contains either a long vowel followed by a short or no consonant (V:(C)) or a long consonant following a short vowel (VC:). 

We investigate adult L2 learners’ perception and production of the above-mentioned contrast through a pre-/ post-/ delayed post-test design, that is, before and after receiving pronunciation instruction with or without gestures. The instruction phase consists of a training video on the given contrast in three different conditions (between subjects): no gestures (audiovisual speech only), and two gesture conditions, testing two different sets of gestures. Additionally, a fourth condition with no training (control group) is included.

Learners’ production is investigated through a word-reading and repetition task and is assessed through native-speaker ratings and acoustic analyses. Perception is measured by means of a visual-word eye tracking experiment, which constitutes a novelty in this field of research. Eye tracking data is analyzed using a growth curve analysis, where the time course of target looking will inform us of the learners’ processing abilities. Moreover, participants are asked to fill out a language background questionnaire and perform auxiliary tests, such as a memory task and a music ability test, to control over individual differences. Data collection is scheduled for spring 2025 and we aim to present the first results at the conference.

Research has shown that gestures can have beneficial effects on second language (L2) pronunciation acquisition. However, we still do not have a coherent picture of these benefits, because different studies have investigated different gestures, testing either learners’ production (Hoetjes & van Maastricht, 2020; Li & Somlak, 2019; Yuan et al., 2019; Zhang et al., 2020) or perception (Baills et al., 2019; Hirata et al., 2014) but hardly both (Xi et al., 2020), and considering either segmental (Hirata et al., 2014; Hoetjes & van Maastricht, 2020; Li & Somlak, 2019; Xi et al., 2020) or prosodic features (Baills et al., 2019; Yuan et al., 2019; Zhang et al., 2020).

Our project aims to investigate whether embodied pronunciation training has beneficial effects on the acquisition of two well-known difficulties for learners of Swedish: a suprasegmental feature, the Swedish complementary length contrast (vila ≠ villa), and a segmental one, the vowel contrast /i/≠/y/.

Through two laboratory studies, focusing on one of the two contrasts each, we will investigate adult L2 learners’ production and perception of the above-mentioned features through a pre-/post-/ delayed post-test design, that is, before and after receiving pronunciation instruction with or without gestures. The instruction phase will consist of a video training learners on the given contrast in two or three different conditions (between subjects): no gestures (audiovisual speech only), and one or two gesture conditions, testing one or two different sets of gestures. Additionally, a control group (no training) will be included. The gesture conditions are currently being defined based on interviews conducted with teachers of L2 Swedish.

Learners’ production will be assessed through native speaker ratings and acoustic analyses. Perception will be measured using a visual-world eye-tracking experiment, providing a continuous measure of learners’ processing abilities. Preliminary results from the first study about the length contrast will be presented at the conference.

These two studies constitute the first part of a five-year project, where the two above- mentioned contrasts will also be investigated in an authentic classroom setting at a later stage.

The prosodic encoding of information structure (IS) is mastered fairly late in children’s language development according to previous research (e.g., MacWhinney & Bates, 1978; de Ruiter, 2010). However, few studies have conducted parallel production and perception experiments to study the relation between children’s encoding and decoding of prosodically marked IS (Chen, 2010); earlier studies involving perception have made use of offline paradigms (e.g., Wells et al., 2004), while more recent studies using online methods such as eye tracking have usually not been complemented by production data (e.g., Ito, 2014). In addition, previous production work has indicated that language-specific aspects of IS coding might play a role, too (e.g., Romøren & Chen, 2015, 2021; Prieto & Esteve-Gibert, 2018). In this study, we explore the production and perception of intonationally marked contrastive focus in 3-5-year-old children speaking either Scanian or Stockholm Swedish, two dialects that differ crucially in the way the focus is encoded phonologically. While both dialects exhibit a lexical accent contrast, focus is phonetically marked more subtle in the Scanian variety: instead of adding a prominence H(igh)-tone for focus, phrase-level prominence is encoded through phonetic adjustments of the H(ihg)-L(ow) accent patterns determined by the lexical accent contrast. By comparing these two Swedish varieties we can thus control for other phonological features (incl. lexical tone), as well as grammar and lexicon. Our production experiment involves eliciting adjective-noun phrases in three different focus conditions, using an interactive video/card game. Production data are analyzed acoustically and auditorily. In our visual-word eye-tracking experiment we use the same pictures of colored objects as in the production experiment to investigate whether and how children make use of contrastive intonation for reference resolution. Eye-tracking data are analyzed using growth curve analysis (Mirman, 2014). Data are currently being collected, and preliminary results will be presented at the conference.

Professional journalistic television production adheres to norms established by traditional media. These norms can be identified via certain types of indicators as listed below. The project examines how alternative media relate to these norms. Our empirical material is the discussion program Morgongänget on the Swedish internet TV channel Riks. We will describe and evaluate its media design in detail, that means, technical aspects and production features such as camera positions, rhetorical means (including language and gestures), sound, dramaturgy, interaction between the participants and its music intro. Two different approaches will be employed in order to get a grip on the profile of this program: First, we will randomly choose some broadcasts for establishing patterns and typical design features of this program. Second, we will compare this alternative morning show with a morning show on a Swedish mainstream channel. For this juxtaposition, we will choose programs that were broadcast on the same day. Through this comparison we will be able to highlight differences and similarities between the designs of both programs. In addition to the technical features, we will evaluate and scrutinize whether and how the program Morgongänget sticks to professional journalistic ethical rules and standards such as truth, honesty, fairness, accuracy, objectivity and non-partisanship. What sets of narratives, expressions, beliefs and stereotypes are used in this type of alternative media format and do these differ from corresponding programs in a public service concept?

Research has shown that gestures can have beneficial effects on second language pronunciation learning. However, previous studies have been conducted mainly in labs and not in classrooms. While teaching tips (e.g. from language learning materials) often include using visual resources such as body language and text annotations in pronunciation instruction, little is known about teachers’ ideas about such resources and their conscious efforts to incorporate body language and gestures in their classroom practice. 

The primary aim of this study is to explore teachers’ ideas and strategies for pronunciation teaching, in particular the use of body language and gestures. To delve into this matter, we conducted semi-structured interviews with nine teachers, all teaching beginner-level Swedish to teenagers or adults. A particular focus towards the end of the interviews was given to the use of gestures in teaching two known difficulties in second language Swedish: /i/≠/y/ and the quantity contrast (vila ≠ villa). The interviews were filmed and subsequently transcribed and analyzed thematically.

Analysis is ongoing but preliminary results show that teachers claim that body language plays an important role in their pronunciation teaching. Indeed, all of them mention using exaggerated articulation, gestures or objects when teaching Swedish vowels and in particular the contrast /i/≠/y/, for example placing a pen above the top lip to elicit the specific protruding lip rounding for /y/. Additionally, when asked about gestures to illustrate the quantity contrast most teachers indicate using very similar gestures. Results are discussed in light of previous studies on the effects of gestures.

This study is part of a five-year research project, named “Swedish Embodied Pronunciation Training,” which focuses on the impact of embodied pronunciation training on learners’ Swedish pronunciation in lab and classroom experiments, more specifically the effects of such training on the two phonological features mentioned above. In addition to the primary aim of understanding how teachers reason about the use of gestures and body language in their teaching practice, the study presented here also serves as an inspiration for the choice of gestures to be used in the upcoming experiments.

Research has shown that gestures can have beneficial effects on second language (L2) pronunciation learning. However, different studies have investigated different gestures and usually either considered effects on learner’s production Fel! Hittar inte referenskälla.Fel! Hittar inte referenskälla.Fel! Hittar inte referenskälla.Fel! Hittar inte referenskälla. or perception Fel! Hittar inte referenskälla.Fel! Hittar inte referenskälla. but hardly both Fel! Hittar inte referenskälla., delivering mixed results. Moreover, previous studies have focused on a small number of L2s such as English Fel! Hittar inte referenskälla., Spanish Fel! Hittar inte referenskälla.Fel! Hittar inte referenskälla., French Fel! Hittar inte referenskälla. Japanese Fel! Hittar inte referenskälla. and Chinese Fel! Hittar inte referenskälla.Fel! Hittar inte referenskälla..  

This study aims to understand whether embodied pronunciation training has beneficial effects on learning the Swedish complementary length contrast (vila ≠ villa). In Swedish, a stressed syllable contains either a long vowel (V:(C)) or a long consonant following a short vowel (VC:). The study will assess adult Swedish learners’ production and perception of this contrast through a pre-/ post-/ delayed post-test design, that is, before and after receiving pronunciation instruction with or without gestures. The instruction phase will consist of a video training learners on the given contrast in three different conditions (between subjects), plus a control group (no training): no gestures (audiovisual speech only), and two gesture conditions, testing two different sets of gestures, where participants will repeat the spoken words while imitating the gestures produced by the instructor in the training video. The gesture conditions are defined based on interviews conducted with nine teachers of Swedish as a second language. During these interviews, teachers were, among others, asked about their use of embodiment and gestures in teaching the Swedish length contrast. Most teachers indicated very similar gestures to illustrate the length contrast, usually involving a metaphorical illustration of temporal length through the depiction of a long horizontal distance in space using both hands (see Fig. 1). Notably, length was usually indicated this way for words with long vowels, rather than for words with long consonants. Words with long consonants (i.e., short vowels) were typically marked with a gesture illustrating brevity, although this was realized differently by different teachers, for instance using a hand clapping gesture, a simple beat gesture (see Fig. 2), or a gesture depicting a short distance (see Fig. 3). In one (of two) gesture conditions, we will thus contrast a length gesture with a brevity gesture, like those seen in Fig. 1 and 3. However, a current debate in the L2 Swedish pronunciation teaching context deals with the issue whether we should characterize the length contrast in terms of long vs. short vowel, or rather in terms of long vowel vs. long consonant. Therefore, in our second set of gestures two length gestures will be used, aligned with the vowel vs. the consonant. 

Learners’ production in the pre- and post-tests will be assessed through native speaker ratings and acoustic analysis. Perception will be measured through an identification task, but also using a visual-world eye-tracking experiment, where the time course of target looking will provide us with a continuous measure of learners’ processing abilities – a novelty in this field of study. In addition, learners will be asked to fill out a language background questionnaire and perform auxiliary tests, such as a memory test or a speech imitation test. We aim to present the final study set-up and some pilot data at the conference.

This initial study is part of a five-year project, which studies effects of embodied pronunciation training in L2 Swedish learning, focusing on two known difficulties: the length contrast (vila ≠ villa) discussed above and the vowel contrast /i/≠/y. We will thus compare a prosodic and a segmental feature, moreover, both in the lab and in an authentic classroom setting. We thus hope to be able to contribute to a broadened as well as deepened understanding of the role of gestures in pronunciation teaching.

Tidigare studier har visat på positiva effekter av gestanvändning vid uttalsinlärning inom andraspråksundervisningen. Vi har dock än så länge ingen sammanhängande bild av sådana effekter, bland annat eftersom olika typer av gester och fonologiska drag har undersökts i dessa studier, och eftersom de flesta studier har genomförts i labbmiljö snarare än i en autentisk klassrumsmiljö. Fokus har dessutom legat på andra andraspråk än svenska (t.ex. engelska, spanska och japanska).

Projektet ”Swedish Embodied Pronunciation Training” syftar till att undersöka effekter av gester på uttalsinlärning i svenska såväl i labbmiljö såsom i klassrum. Projektet omfattar fyra studier – två i labb och två i klassrum. Två av studierna (labb, klassrum) kommer att fokusera på den svenska vokalkontrasten /i/≠/y/, de andra två (labb, klassrum) på kvantitetskontrasten (vila ≠ villa). Studierna kommer att mäta både inlärarnas produktion och perception av dessa uttalsdrag såväl före som efter en träningsfas. Under träningsfasen delas deltagarna in i olika grupper varpå några får uttalsträning med de utvalda gesterna och andra utan. I labbstudien kommer dessutom påverkan från olika gester att jämföras.

Projektet är nyskapande i flera hänseenden. Designen inkluderar jämförelser mellan labb och klassrum, mellan ett prosodiskt och ett segmentellt drag samt mellan påverkan på produktion och på perception. Vi kommer därtill att använda eye-tracking för att introducera ett kontinuerligt mått på deltagarnas perception i för- och eftertesterna. Projektet förväntas därför skapa en både breddad och fördjupad förståelse av nyttan med gester i uttalsundervisningen.

Prosodic research on speech-gesture integration has shown that gestures temporally align with prominent units in speech, e.g., [1][2][3], as formulated in terms of the phonological synchronization rule by McNeill [4]. Some studies have also provided evidence that speech and gesture may converge not only in the temporal, but also in the “spatial” domain, displaying correlations between the presence and strength of gestures (magnitude or complexity of gestures) with the strength of acoustic parameters in the production of prosodic prominence (as reflected, for instance, in the accentual fundamental frequency [fo] range), e.g., [5][6][7][8]. This spatial convergence has been formulated in terms of the Cumulative-Cue Hypothesis [7][9] and has been argued to result from an underlying compulsion to express prominence in both speech and gesture, all else being equal. This compulsion could be understood as part of a revised Effort Code [10]: To signal prominence, we tend to produce vocal and gestural signals indicating an increased level of effort [9]. However, evidence in favor of the Cumulative-Cue Hypothesis is still rather sparse and diverse and stems mostly from studies involving instructed or elicited movements, rather than naturally occurring co-speech gestures. Also, most studies have strictly focused on arm or hand gestures, and hardly any studies have considered gestural clustering (e.g., combined hand and head gestures) as a possible dimension of gestural strength. The present study extends this line of research, studying the realization of phrase-level pitch accents in Swedish (so-called ‘big accents’, see Fig. 1) as a function of accompanying manual gesture strokes and eyebrow movements. Our materials consist of Swedish spontaneous dyadic conversations taken from the Spontal Corpus [11]. So far, data from eight speakers (four female, four male; 20 minutes in total, or 4294 words) have been included in our preliminary analysis (Tab.1, Fig. 2), but more data are currently being processed. Big accents (BA) were manually labelled with access to the audio channel and an fo display, but without using the video channel. Manual gestures (MG) and eyebrow movements (EB) were manually labelled with access to the video only. All events (BA, MG, EB) were labelled, at least partially, by two annotators, revealing acceptable inter-rater reliabilities (κBA=.78; κEB=.70; κMG=.82). For BAs, fo landmarks were annotated manually (Fig. 1), following the criteria specified in [7]. Based on these landmarks, two dependent variables were calculated: the range (in semitones) of the accentual fall (if present) of the potentially two-peaked BA (see Fig. 1), and the range of the subsequent big-accent rise. Linear mixed modeling and likelihood ratio tests were used to assess how well the ranges of the fall and the rise are predictable by the presence of gesture (clusters), operationalized as a predictor MMP (multimodal prominence), comprising the four levels BA (= accent only, no gesture), BA+MG, BA+EB, BA+MG+EB. In this preliminary data set, EBs and MGs seldom clustered (Tab. 1), that is, pitch accents most often occurred either with a manual or an eyebrow gesture, or without any gesture. The preliminary results reveal a significant trend for larger fo rises when an eyebrow movement accompanies the accented word, as indicated by a significant contribution of the predictor MMP (χ2=19.93, df=3, p<.001), and significant post-hoc comparisons for BA vs. BA+EB (t=4.96, df=758, p<.001) and BA+MG vs. BA+EB (t=4.75, df=758, p<.001). This suggests new, partial evidence for the Cumulative-Cue Hypothesis, although results for the BA+MG+EB cluster seem to suggest counterevidence. However, this preliminary data set contains very few data points for BA+MG+EB. At the conference, we will also discuss these results in relation to other hypotheses characterized by trading relationships.

Research has shown that gestures can have beneficial effects on second language (L2) pronunciation learning. However, we still do not have a coherent picture of these effects, because different studies have investigated different gestures and usually either considered segmental (Hoetjes & van Maastricht, 2020; Iizuka et al., 2020; Li & Somlak, 2019; Xi et al., 2020) or prosodic (Morett & Chang, 2015; Yuan et al., 2019; Zhang et al., 2020; Zheng et al., 2018) features, but not both, and mostly either tested learners’ production or perception. Importantly, most of these studies have been conducted in a lab setting rather than in an authentic classroom setting. 

This project aims to study the effects of embodied training, using gestures, on pronunciation learning in Swedish, in two lab studies and two classroom studies. Two studies (one in each setting) will focus on a segmental feature, namely the Swedish vowel contrast /i/≠/y/, while the other two will focus on a prosodic one, more specifically the Swedish length contrast (vila ≠ villa). 

The studies will assess both learners’ perception and production of these phonological features before and after a training phase, through a pre-/post-/delayed post-test design. The instruction phase will consist of a video training learners on the given contrast in three different conditions (between subjects), plus a control group (no training): one group without gestures (audiovisual speech only condition), and the other two groups will receive training with two different gestures. The gesture conditions are currently being defined based on interviews conducted with teachers of Swedish as a second language.

Learners’ production in the pre- and post-tests will be assessed through native speaker ratings and acoustic analysis. Perception will be measured through identification or discrimination tasks, but also using eye-tracking, providing a continuous measure of learners’ processing abilities.