The Effectiveness of Shadowing Practice with Web-Based Apps: Towards Promoting the Comprehensibility and Lexical-Level Intelligibility of EFL Students' Presentations

Pronunciation instruction has long been associated with decontextualized, unconscious mechanical drills and is often neglected in the EFL (English as a foreign language) classroom despite its importance for communication. To meet the pronunciation needs of EFL students, the current study employed contextualized shadowing practice for students to practice English oral presentation scripts. This mixed-method, quasi-experimental study was conducted with college EFL juniors in southern Taiwan, and examined the effectiveness of 6 weeks of shadowing practice with web-based apps to enhance comprehensibility and lexical-level intelligibility. A total of three intact classes (N = 90) participated, with one randomly selected as the control group and the other two as the experimental groups which implemented web-based shadowing practice outside class. Pre- and post-tests were used to measure the participants' gains in comprehensibility and lexical-level intelligibility, and questionnaires and interviews were adopted to probe their perceptions. The results indicated that shadowing practice is effective in improving EFL students' comprehensibility and lexical-level intelligibility. Shadowing practice helped the students become aware of their self-perceived differences between their pronunciation and the model pronunciation so that they could adopt a more standard form of pronunciation. Moreover, the qualitative results indicated that the participants held positive views towards shadowing practice, and the interviews revealed how students developed metacognitive strategies to build awareness of English suprasegmental features. The findings are of significance to English language instructors and researchers, and also provide empirical support for pedagogical practices that incorporate shadowing with web-based tools.