THE EFFECT OF ACTIVE MUSICAL TRAINING ON LEARNING...
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PHD PROJECT Universitat Pompeu Fabra THE EFFECT OF ACTIVE MUSICAL TRAINING ON LEARNING THE PRONUNCIATION OF A FOREIGN LANGUAGE BY SCHOOL CHILDREN FLORENCE BAILLS Project supervisor: Dr. PILAR PRIETO VIVES
Transcript of THE EFFECT OF ACTIVE MUSICAL TRAINING ON LEARNING...
PHD PROJECT
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
THE EFFECT OF ACTIVE MUSICAL
TRAINING ON LEARNING THE
PRONUNCIATION OF A FOREIGN
LANGUAGE BY SCHOOL CHILDREN
FLORENCE BAILLS
Project supervisor: Dr. PILAR PRIETO VIVES
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ABSTRACT
Previous research has reported that musical training leads to modification in brain
plasticity and enhanced speech abilities in a first language (see Besson, Chobert,
Astésano, & Marie, 2015, for a review), for instance, stronger phonological awareness
and reading abilities (Tierney & Kraus, 2013). Positive associations between musical
ability and second language pronunciation have been reported in children and adults
(see Milovanov & Tervaniemi, 2011 for a review). Moreover, in different speech-impaired
populations, rhythmic entrainment has shown beneficial effects on speech production
(François, Grau-Sánchez, Duarte, & Rodriguez-Fornells, 2015). However, little is known
about the potential effects of including musical elements to language instruction on the
pronunciation of a second language. The present thesis proposes three experimental
studies and a correlational study with second graders (7-8 year-olds) to explore the
effects of active musical training on second language pronunciation.
The first study (running) is a short between-subject training with a pretest and posttest
design to test the effects of hand-clapping the rhythmic structure of words on L2
pronunciation, using an elicited imitation task. Theoretically, it relies on the similarities
between musical and speech rhythm and it follows up on recent results showing that
using rhythmic primes matched to the prosodic features of speech enhances the
phonological processing of spoken words (Nia Cason, Astésano, & Schön, 2015). Thirty-
five 7-8 year-old children from Girona, Catalonia, were trained to learn and repeat 20
words whose meanings were transparent for Catalan speakers, in one of two conditions,
namely with or without hand-clapping. The pronunciation of those targets will be rated
for accentedness before and after training by 2 French native speakers and mean
pronunciation improvement will be compared across conditions.
Following up on findings that singers outperform instrumentalists in foreign speech
imitation (Christiner & Reiterer, 2015), a second experiment with a similar design as the
first study will test the gains of learning words and simple sentences in a novel second
language by listening to songs in this language. Second-graders will be tested when
learning short songs with well-known melodies such as “Happy Birthday”, and their
pronunciation on related and unrelated speech fragments will be tested.
The third study of this thesis will consist of a classroom intervention study which will
assess the effects of one-month classroom training using productive and receptive
musical activities and their effects on pronunciation in a second language. Three second
grade class groups (approximately fifty 7-year-olds) will participate in 8 training sessions
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in one of the three conditions, namely a non-musical condition (e.g. learning target words
and simple sentences in French with games), an integrated musical condition (e.g.
learning words and simple sentences with musical activities integrated to the games) or
a consecutive musical condition (e.g. learning words and simple sentences with games
after a musical session). The pronunciation of French words and simple sentences will
again be rated before and after training by native speakers of French.
For each of the three studies, a set of linguistic and cognitive measures will be taken for
each participant. A last study will consist of a correlational analysis of the individual data
collected in the experiments and assess whether speech skills in a second language
(phonological perception, foreign speech imitation) are correlated with musical skills
(musical experience, musical aptitude, musical production), linguistic skills (narrative
task) and cognitive skills (working memory).
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RESUM
Algunes investigacions prèvies han demostrat que la formació musical modifica la
plasticitat del cervell i provoca beneficis en la parla de la primera llengua (vegeu Besson,
Chobert, Astésano, & Marie, 2015, per a una revisió), com, per exemple, en la
consciència fonològica i en les habilitats de lectura (Tierney & Kraus, 2013). A més,
s'han mostrat correlacions positives entre les habilitats musicals i la pronúncia d’una
segona llengua tant en nens com en adults (vegeu Milovanov & Tervaniemi, 2011 per
a una revisió). D'altra banda, també s’ha observat que els entrenaments rítmics amb
diferents poblacions amb impediments de la parla tenen efectes positius en les habilitats
lingüístiques dels subjectes (François, Grau-Sánchez, Duarte, & Rodríguez-Fornells,
2015). No obstant això, en l’àmbit de l’aprenentatge de la pronúncia, poc se sap dels
efectes potencials dels elements musicals inclosos en l'ensenyament d'una segona
llengua. Per explorar aquesta qüestió, a la present tesi es proposen tres estudis
experimentals i un quart estudi correlacional amb alumnes de segon de primària (7-8
anys d'edat).
El primer estudi (actualment en curs) consisteix en un entrenament curt amb un disseny
pre- i post-test que pretén estudiar els efectes del marcatge de l'estructura rítmica de les
paraules. Aquest estudi es fonamenta en les similituds entre els ritmes musicals i el ritme
de la parla i està basat en un experiment que ha demostrat que els marcadors rítmics
coherents amb les característiques prosòdiques de paraules milloren el processament
fonològic d’aquestes paraules (Nia Cason et al., 2015). Trenta-cinc nens d’una escola
de Girona van aprendre 20 paraules en francès. Sempre imitant l’instructor, en una
condició repetien les paraules a la vegada que picaven de mans, i en l’altre repetien les
paraules sense picar de mans. Està previst avaluar la pronúncia dels participants abans
i després de l’entrenament per tal de valorar si s’ha produït una millora en funció de les
condicions.
El segon experiment de la tesi tindrà un disseny similar al precedent i estudiarà els
efectes de les cançons en l’aprenentatge de la pronúncia de paraules i frases senzilles
en una segona llengua. Els alumnes de segon de primària aprendran la lletra de cançons
infantils (com “Moltes felicitats”) en dues condicions : (1) només repetint el text en
francès, i (2) repetint el text amb la melodia (és a dir, cantant).
El tercer experiment d'aquesta tesi consistirà en un estudi d'intervenció a l'aula que
avaluarà els efectes d’activitats musicals productives i receptives sobre la pronúncia
d’una segona llengua. Tres grups de classe de segon de primària (aproximadament
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cinquanta nens) participaran en 8 sessions d'entrenament en una de les tres condicions
següents: (1) condició “no musical” (per exemple, aprendre paraules i frases senzilles
en francès amb jocs); (2) condició musical integrada (per exemple, l'aprenentatge de
paraules i frases senzilles amb activitats musicals integrades als jocs); o (3) condició
musical prèvia a l’exposició de la llengua (per exemple, l'aprenentatge de paraules i
frases senzilles amb jocs després d'una sessió musical). La pronúncia serà avaluada
abans i després de l'entrenament per parlants nadius de francès.
Dels tres primers estudis es recolliran tota una sèrie de mesures lingüístiques i
cognitives per cada participant, les quals seran emprades per realitzar un últim estudi,
que consistirà en un anàlisis de correlació d’aquestes dades individuals recollides en els
experiments, és a dir, entre les habilitats de la parla en una segona llengua (percepció
fonològica, imitació en llengües desconegudes), les habilitats musicals (experiència
musical, aptitud musical, producció musical), les habilitats lingüístiques (tasca narrativa)
i les habilitats cognitives (memòria de treball).
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RESUMEN
Algunas investigaciones previas han demostrado que la formación musical modifica la
plasticidad del cerebro y provoca beneficios en el habla de la primera lengua (véase
Besson, Chobert, Astesano, & Marie, 2015, para una revisión), como, por ejemplo, en la
conciencia fonológica y en las habilidades de lectura (Tierney & Kraus, 2013). Además,
se han mostrado correlaciones positivas entre las habilidades musicales y la
pronunciación de una segunda lengua tanto en niños, como en adultos (véase Milovanov
& Tervaniemi, 2011 para una revisión). Por otra parte, también se ha observado que los
entrenamientos rítmicos con diferentes poblaciones con impedimentos del habla tienen
efectos positivos en las habilidades lingüísticas de los sujetos (François, Grado-
Sánchez, Duarte, & Rodríguez-Fornells, 2015). Sin embargo, en el ámbito del
aprendizaje de la pronunciación, poco se sabe de los efectos potenciales de los
elementos musicales incluidos en la enseñanza de una segunda lengua. Para explorar
esta cuestión, en la presente tesis se proponen tres estudios experimentales y un cuarto
estudio correlacional con alumnos de segundo de primaria (7-8 años de edad).
El primer estudio (actualmente en curso) consiste en un entrenamiento corto con un
diseño pre- y post-test que pretende estudiar los efectos del marcaje de la estructura
rítmica de las palabras. Este estudio se fundamenta en las similitudes entre los ritmos
musicales y el ritmo del habla y está basado en un experimento que ha demostrado que
los marcadores rítmicos coherentes con las características prosódicas de palabras
mejoran el procesamiento fonológico de estas palabras (Cason, Astesano, & Schön,
2015). Treinta y cinco niños de una escuela de Girona aprendieron 20 palabras en
francés. Siempre imitando el instructor, en una condición repetían las palabras a la vez
que daban palmas, y en la otra repetían las palabras sin más. Está previsto evaluar la
pronunciación de los participantes antes y después del entrenamiento para valorar si se
ha producido una mejora en función de las condiciones.
El segundo experimento de la tesis tendrá un diseño similar al precedente y estudiará
los efectos de las canciones en el aprendizaje de la pronunciación de palabras y frases
sencillas en una segunda lengua. Los alumnos de segundo de primaria aprenderán la
letra de canciones infantiles (como "Cumpleaños feliz") en dos condiciones: (1) solo
repitiendo el texto en francés, y (2) repitiendo el texto con la melodía (es decir,
cantando).
El tercer experimento de esta tesis consistirá en un estudio de intervención en el aula
que evaluará los efectos de actividades musicales productivas y receptivas sobre la
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pronunciación de una segunda lengua. Tres grupos de clase de segundo de primaria
(aproximadamente cincuenta niños) participarán en 8 sesiones de entrenamiento en una
de las tres condiciones siguientes: (1) condición "no musical" (por ejemplo, aprender
palabras y frases sencillas en francés con juegos); (2) condición musical integrada (por
ejemplo, el aprendizaje de palabras y frases sencillas con actividades musicales
integradas en los juegos); o (3) condición musical previa a la exposición de la lengua
(por ejemplo, el aprendizaje de palabras y frases sencillas con juegos después de una
sesión musical). La pronunciación será evaluada antes y después del entrenamiento
para hablantes nativos de francés.
De los tres primeros estudios se recogerán toda una serie de medidas lingüísticas y
cognitivas por cada participante, las cuales serán utilizadas para realizar un último
estudio, que consistirá en un análisis de correlación de estos datos individuales
recogidos en los experimentos, es decir, entre las habilidades del habla en una segunda
lengua (percepción fonológica, imitación en lenguas desconocidas), las habilidades
musicales (experiencia musical, aptitud musical, producción musical), las habilidades
lingüísticas (tarea narrativa) y las habilidades cognitivas (memoria de trabajo).
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ......................................................................................................................................... II
RESUM ............................................................................................................................................... IV
RESUMEN ......................................................................................................................................... VI
TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................................. VIII
1. INTRODUCTION OF THE RESEARCH TOPIC ....................................................................... 1
1.1 OBJECT OF ANALYSIS ................................................................................................................. 1 1.2 STATE OF THE ART ...................................................................................................................... 1
1.2.1 Music, cognition, and language............................................................................................. 1 1.2.1.1 The effects of musical expertise .............................................................................................. 2
1.2.1.1.1 Effects of musical expertise on sound perception ........................................................... 2 1.2.1.1.2 Effects of musical expertise on speech perception ......................................................... 3 1.2.1.1.3 Effects of musical expertise and phonological skills in a second language ................ 4
1.2.1.2 The effects of musical aptitude ...................................................................................................... 5 1.2.1.3 The effects of musical training ....................................................................................................... 6
1.2.2 The acquisition of L2 pronunciation ...................................................................................... 8 1.2.2.1 The role of suprasegmental features in learner’s comprehensibility, intelligibility and
accentedness ................................................................................................................................................ 9 1.2.2.2 Teaching L2 suprasegmental features ......................................................................................... 9
1.2.3 Hypotheses of the studies: Enhancing L2 pronunciation ................................................ 11 1.2.3.1 Rhythm ............................................................................................................................................ 11 1.2.3.2 Songs .............................................................................................................................................. 12
1.3 OBJECTIVES .............................................................................................................................. 14 1.4 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK(S) ................................................................................................. 15
1.4.1 Music and language: two faces of the same coin? .......................................................... 15 1.4.2 Cross-domain auditory plasticity ......................................................................................... 16
1.4.2.1 Musical rhythm and speech rhythm ............................................................................................ 17 1.4.2.2 Songs and cross-domain plasticity .............................................................................................. 18
1.4.3 Embodied cognition .............................................................................................................. 18 1.5 HYPOTHESES, ASSUMPTIONS, OR BACKGROUND IDEAS ................................................................. 20
1.5.1 Phonological differences between Catalan and French .................................................. 20 1.5.2 Musical activities in the second language classroom as part of pronunciation training
........................................................................................................................................................... 20 1.5.2.1 Hand-clapping as the body externalization of word prosody ................................................... 21 1.5.2.2 Singing as a facilitator to memorize and produce foreign words and sentences.................. 21
2. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .................................................................................................... 22
2.1 PARTICIPANTS ................................................................................................................................. 22 2.2 CONTROL TESTS .............................................................................................................................. 22
2.2.1 Memory span test .................................................................................................................. 23 2.2.2 Narrative ability: story retelling task .................................................................................... 23 2.2.3. Speech imitation task .......................................................................................................... 24 2.2.4 Perceptual discrimination task ............................................................................................ 24 2.2.5 Musical expertise .................................................................................................................. 25 2.2.6 Musical aptitude .................................................................................................................... 25
2.2.6.1 Evaluation of musical perception ................................................................................................. 25 2.2.6.2 Evaluation of musical production ................................................................................................. 26
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2.3 STUDY 1 ........................................................................................................................................... 26 2.3.1 Research question ................................................................................................................ 26 2.3.2 Methodology .......................................................................................................................... 26
2.3.1.1. Participants .................................................................................................................................... 26 2.3.1.2. Materials ........................................................................................................................................ 27
2.3.1.2.1 Selection of French words .................................................................................................... 27 2.3.1.2.2 Audiovisual recordings of the training materials ................................................................ 28 2.3.1.2.3 Audio material for the pre and post-tests ........................................................................... 29
2.3.1.3. Procedure ...................................................................................................................................... 29 2.3.1.3.1 Procedure for the pre- and post-test ................................................................................... 29 2.3.1.3.2 Procedure for the training phase ......................................................................................... 30
2.3.1.4 Pronunciation ratings of the pre-test and post-test items ......................................................... 31 2.4 STUDY 2 ........................................................................................................................................... 31
2.4.1 Research Question ............................................................................................................... 32 2.4.2 Methodology .......................................................................................................................... 32 2.4.3 Materials ................................................................................................................................. 32
2.5 STUDY 3 ........................................................................................................................................... 33 2.5.1 Research Question ............................................................................................................... 33 2.5.2 Methodology .......................................................................................................................... 33 2.5.3. Materials ................................................................................................................................ 34
2.5.3.1Training sessions ............................................................................................................................ 34 2.5.3.2 Pre and posttest items .................................................................................................................. 34
2.6 STUDY 4 ........................................................................................................................................... 35 2.6.1 Research Questions ............................................................................................................. 36 2.6.2 Methodology .......................................................................................................................... 36 2.6.3 Tools and resources ............................................................................................................. 36
3. WORKING SCHEDULE ............................................................................................................... 38
4. SELECTED REFERENCES ......................................................................................................... 40
5. GENERAL REFERENCES ........................................................................................................... 44
5. APPENDIX ..................................................................................................................................... 60
APPENDIX A – LANGUAGE AND MUSICAL EXPERIENCE QUESTIONNAIRE .............................................. 60 APPENDIX B – LISTS OF CATALAN WORDS FOR THE MEMORY SPAN TEST ........................................... 61 APPENDIX C – NARRATIVE SCORING ..................................................................................................... 62 APPENDIX D – PHONOLOGICAL DISCRIMINATION TEST FOR FRENCH PHONEMES ................................ 63 APPENDIX E – WORDS SELECTED FOR THE TRAINING, THE PRE-TEST AND THE POST-TEST OF STUDY
1 ............................................................................................................................................................. 64 APPENDIX F – TRAINING PROCEDURE OF THE FIRST SESSION, STUDY 3 ............................................. 65
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1. INTRODUCTION OF THE RESEARCH TOPIC
In the present section, we explain the object of this PhD project and a brief overview of
prior work in two complementary fields, e.g., first in the field of musical expertise, aptitude
and training and how they relate to speech and language learning, and second in the
field of second language acquisition of pronunciation.
1.1 Object of analysis
The use of musical activities in the second language classroom1 has been promoted for
some years now. Language teachers frequently integrate songs in their lesson plan.
Directed to children or to adults, listening to songs and singing are associated with a
feeling of joy and are considered to amplify the motivation for learning (Abbott, 2002).
Typically, musical activities in the classroom are used to introduce new vocabulary and
new syntactic forms, and some authors in the field of second language acquisition claim
that such activities increase learning retention and effectiveness (Fonseca Mora & Gant,
2016). However, more empirical evidence is needed in both laboratory and educational
settings about the benefits of musical training for second language learning, especially
in the domain of pronunciation acquisition, where little research has been carried out.
Since musicians have been proven to perform better than non-musicians in many
aspects of speech perception (see Besson, Chobert, Astésano, & Marie, 2015, for a
review) we believe that there are reasons to think that musical expertise and musical
training may positively influence the acquisition of second language pronunciation
abilities.
1.2 State of the art
1.2.1 Music, cognition, and language
A whole line of investigation has explored the role of music on different cognitive
1 In this thesis plan, the term ‘second language learning’ is used as a cover term that refers to the process of learning another language after the native or dominant one. This is a common strategy in the field, which also uses this term to refer to the learning of a third or a fourth language (Gass & Selinker, 2001).
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functions and has shown that musical experience has enhancing effects on a variety of
cognitive functions (see Benz, Sellaro, Hommel, & Colzato, 2016, for a review).
Improvements have been found on executive control (Bialystok & DePape, 2009),
auditory and visual working memory (George & Coch, 2011; D. L. Strait, Parbery-Clark,
Hittner, & Kraus, 2012), verbal memory (Brandler & Rammsayer, 2003; Chan, Ho, &
Cheung, 1998; Franklin et al., 2008), auditory and visual attention (Roden, Grube,
Bongard, & Kreutz, 2014; Rodrigues et al., 2013; D. L. Strait et al., 2012), processing
speed in both visual and auditory information (Bugos & Mostafa, 2011; Roden et al.,
2014), reasoning ability (Bergman Nutley, Darki, & Klingberg, 2014; Bilhartz, Bruhn, &
Olson, 1999; Forgeard et al., 2008), as well as on higher IQ measures (Schellenberg,
2006; Schellenberg, Burnham, Peretz, & Pliner, 1999) and creativity in general
(Woodward & Sikes, 2015).
There is also growing evidence about the tight relationship between music and language
(see section 1.4.1), notably in relation to language prosody (Heffner & Slevc, 2015). A
large range of studies have suggested that music perception and language perception
processes share structural and auditory mechanisms and can influence each other (see
Asaridou & McQueen, 2013; and Jäncke, 2012, for a review). One of the strongest
theories related to music and language has been proposed by Patel (2011, 2012, 2014)
who hypothesized that the brain plasticity induced by music affects speech abilities
under a series of conditions (see section 1.4.1.2 for further details).
In the following sections we will review the work on the how a set of linguistic abilities are
influenced by individual factors such as musical expertise (generally understood as the
expertise in regularly playing an instrument or singing for more than two years; see
Chobert & Besson, 2013), musical aptitude (e.g., innate musical talent which is
independent of playing an instrument or singing; see Milovanov, Huotilainen, Välimäki,
Esquef, & Tervaniemi, 2008), and musical training (e.g., relatively short trainings up to
two years of duration; see Chobert, François, Velay, & Besson, 2014).
1.2.1.1 The effects of musical expertise
1.2.1.1.1 Effects of musical expertise on sound perception
Many studies in the neuroscience of music have shown that musicians outperform non-
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musicians in various aspects of sound and melodic perception. Musicians have been
shown to have more fine-grained perceptual abilities for pitch discrimination of pure and
harmonic tones (e.g. Bidelman, Krishnan, & Gandour, 2010; Kishon-Rabin, Amir, Vexler,
& Zaltz, 2001; Micheyl, Delhommeau, Perrot, & Oxenham, 2006; Spiegel & Watson,
1984, among others), as well as better accuracy scores in discrimination tasks focusing
on sound pitch and duration (Koelsch, Schröger, & Tervaniemi, 1999; Micheyl et al.,
2006; Tervaniemi et al., 2006). Musical expertise increases the ability to detect pitch
changes in melodic contours (e.g. Fujioka, Trainor, Ross, Kakigi, & Pantev, 2004;
Trainor, Desjardins, & Rockel, 1999) and the faster and better detection of subtle
variations of pitch, rhythm, and harmony within musical phrases (e.g. Besson & Faïta,
1995; Bidelman, Krishnan, & Gandour, 2010; Koelsch et al., 2002). At the same time,
studies using MRI, fMRI, or MEG methods have demonstrated that professional
musicians with years of intensive musical practice present modified brain anatomy
related to white matter organization and thicker gray matter in motor and auditory cortices
(Bengtsson et al., 2005; Imfeld, Oechslin, Meyer, Loenneker, & Jancke, 2009;
Schmithorst, Vincent J. Wilke, 2002).
1.2.1.1.2 Effects of musical expertise on speech perception
Research on the effect of musical expertise on language features is based on the overlap
of functional brain processing between music and speech, on the similarities between
their acoustic features (see 1.3.1 and 1.3.2). In a variety of experiments, Besson and
colleagues (Besson, Schön, Moreno, Santos, & Magne, 2007; Magne, Schön, & Besson,
2006; Marques, Moreno, Castro, & Besson, 2007; Moreno & Besson, 2006; Schön,
Magne, & Besson, 2004) demonstrated the musicians’ increased sensitivity to sound
perception. For example, in two studies, they manipulated the pitch of sentence-final
words to different degrees (subtle or easy to detect) and measured pitch variation
detection in the native language of the listener (Schön et al., 2004) and in an unknown
language (Marques et al., 2007). In both studies, results showed that musicians
outperformed non-musicians only when pitch variations that were difficult to detect. The
ERP analysis confirmed these results by showing increased activity of the P3 component
during subtle pitch variations only in musicians.
A handful of studies have used Mandarin Chinese to show that musicians detect tone
and segmental variations better than non-musicians (Delogu, Lampis, & Belardinelli,
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2010; Gottfried, Staby, & Ziemer, 2004; Lee & Hung, 2008; Marie, Delogu, Lampis,
Berlardinelli, & Besson, 2011). In Marie et al. (2011), twenty-four French participants (12
musicians and 12 non musicians) listened to two sequences of four monosyllabic
Mandarin words that were either the same or different. When different, one word in the
sequence varied in tone (e.g., fēi vs. féi) or in segmental cues (e.g., dié vs. tié). Analysis
of the ERPs showed a larger latency of the N2/N3 component when exposed to tone
variations and shorter amplitude and latency of the P3b component when exposed to
tone and segmental variations only in musicians.
The influence of musical expertise on vowel duration and metrical processing in natural
speech has also been investigated (e.g., Magne et al., 2007; Marie, Kujala, & Besson,
2011). In these two studies, the authors created an unexpected lengthening of the
penultimate syllable that disrupted the metrical structure of words without modifying
timber or frequency. Sentence-final words were also semantically congruous or
incongruous within the context. Participants performed two tasks. In a metric task, they
were asked to decide whether the sentence was correctly pronounced or not. In the
semantic task, they had to decide whether the final word was expected within the context
or not. In both tasks, musicians outperformed non-musicians (as measured by the
percentage of errors). As expected, the ERP data differed between tasks: the P2
component (perceptual processing) was larger in musicians than in non-musicians. By
contrast, the N400 effect (semantic processing) was not different in both groups.
Additionally, François and Schön (2011) used training in a sung artificial language to
study speech segmentation abilities. Sixteen professional musicians and twenty non-
musicians were asked to listen carefully to a stream of sung syllables for several minutes.
Consecutively, participants had to choose which of the two presented items was present
in the stream. In a first, linguistic test, items had a flat contour (‘‘spoken’’ version) while
in a second, musical test, they were accompanied with a piano sound. While behavioral
measures didn’t show any significant difference between musicians and non-musicians,
electrophysiological data revealed that French musicians had larger amplitude at the
N400-like component during the tests, which suggest that musicians have a more
“robust” representation of both musical and linguistic structures.
1.2.1.1.3 Effects of musical expertise and phonological skills in a second
language
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Studies have shown that musical expertise improve children’s skills for second language
listening comprehension and vocabulary (Swaminathan & Gopinath, 2013; Yang, Ma,
Gong, Hu, & Yao, 2014), vocabulary learning (Coyle & Gómez Gracia, 2014) and reading
(Fonseca-Mora, Jara-Jiménez, & Gómez-Domínguez, 2015; Lowe, 1997). Interestingly,
Swaminathan and Gopinath (2013) undertook a study with 76 primary-school children
who were native speakers of various Indian languages and found that those who were
learning either Western or Indian music performed better in English L2 comprehension
and vocabulary than non-musicians, therefore showing that the type of musicianship did
not influence the results.
If musical expertise seems to facilitate perceptive phonological skills, less is known about
its potential effects on productive skills in a second language. Gottfried et al. (2004)
tested 43 American English participants with or without musical expertise at imitating
Mandarin Chinese syllables with the four tones. Results showed that participants with
musical expertise were rated significantly better that non-musicians. Christiner and
Reiterer (2015) investigated the relationship between singing/instrument performers and
speech imitation skills. Their results showed that professional singers and
instrumentalists outperformed non-singers and non-instrumentalists in the speech
imitation of foreign languages. Additionally, they found that singers performed
significantly better than instrumentalists. They propose that vocal motor training such as
the kind of training singers undergo may induce vocal flexibility and facilitate speech
imitation abilities.
The abovementioned studies suggest that a clear transfer of abilities from music-to
language related elements and specifically speech-related elements is taking place. This
constitutes the main motivation for some of the studies presented for this PhD thesis. In
parallel, other studies have focused on the effect of musical aptitude on language
acquisition, which we will review in the following section.
1.2.1.2 The effects of musical aptitude
Musical aptitude2 and its effect on language learning has been much less studied than
2 Musical aptitude is generally assessed by taking a battery of tests measuring the ability of the participant in a series of musical domains, most frequently rhythm, pitch, and melody. In the literature mentioned in this research plan, authors have generally been using the Seashore Measures of Musical Talent (Seashore, Lewis, & Saetveit, 1960) or the Advanced Measure of Musical Audition (Gordon, 1989).
6
musical expertise. Nevertheless, this section presents a handful of studies that have
shown a positive relationship between musical aptitude and a variety of linguistic skills.
Anvari, Trainor, Woodside, & Levy, (2002) found a significant relationship between music
perception skills and reading skills when testing 100 children between 4 and 5 years of
age, while controlling for phonological awareness and other cognitive abilities. In a study
by Posedel, Emery, Souza, and Fountain (2012), pitch perception (and not musical
expertise), was the only significant predictor of Spanish pronunciation quality. However,
this study did not control for intelligence and L2 vocabulary knowledge. Moreover, they
considered the length of formal Spanish learning as a single measure of L2 competency,
without taking into account any other individual difference that could influence
pronunciation. Milovanov et al. (2008) investigated the relationship between musical
aptitude and second language pronunciation skills. They assessed a set of forty 10 to
12-year-old Finnish children in their English pronunciation skills. Children with better
performance in the language tests were those who possessed higher musical abilities.
Along these lines, Milovanov, Pietilä, Tervaniemi, & Esquef, (2010) examined the
pronunciation of English as a second language by 3 groups of 46 Finnish adults, divided
into three groups, namely, non-musician, non-English speaking participants with a
musical aptitude score of 38%, non-musician English philology students with a musical
aptitude score of 69%, and non-English-speaking choir singers with a musical aptitude
score of 78%. While all the participants performed equally in a phonemic discrimination
task, those with higher music aptitude obtained higher scores in ratings of a set of difficult
phonemes.
Musical aptitude has been regarded as an individual difference in L2 learning mainly due
to its impact on phonological skills, but in light of a growing body of evidence from
neurolinguistics studies, further investigations have tried to pinpoint the transfer of
competence between music and language through training and intervention
methodologies.
1.2.1.3 The effects of musical training
Experiments including musical training periods are varied in terms of the object of study
(e.g., speech segmentation, phonological skills, memory skills, reading skills etc.)
training length (from short priming treatments to two years of implementation), and also
in terms of the training materials used in the study (rhythm training, melodic training,
7
etc.). In this section we will review a handful of the effects of musical training on a variety
of language skills.
Bhide, Power and Goswami (2013) compared 2 months of rhythm-based training against
more classical phoneme-grapheme training with nineteen children between 6 and 7
years of age considered to be poor readers. They found that both interventions had
positive effects on the standardized tests for auditory, phonological and literacy skills.
François, Chobert, Besson and Schön (2013) carried out a 2-year longitudinal study with
a set of thirty-seven 8-year-old French children to examine the role of musical training
on speech segmentation. Children were assigned randomly either to music training or
painting training groups. The authors tested the children three times (before training,
after one year and after two years) at a speech segmentation task and found that children
in the music training group outperformed children in the painting training group during
post-tests.
Moreno et al. (2009) conducted a longitudinal study with thirty-two 8-year-old Portuguese
children over 9 months. The training lasted 6 months and consisted of either musical
activities or painting activities. Musical training was based on a combination of Kodály3,
Orff4 (Goodkin, 2004), and Wuytack (Wuytack & Palheiros, 1995) methodologies, and
included training on rhythm, melody, harmony, and timbre. Before and after training,
event-related brain potentials were recorded during reading and pitch processing tasks.
Only after musical training, children showed enhanced reading abilities and subtle pitch
discrimination abilities in speech, as detected by the ERP.
In an electrophysiological (EEG) experiment, Cason & Schön (2012) found evidence that
musical rhythmic priming enhanced the phonological processing of bi- or trisyllabic
pseudo-words with a final stressed syllable when the speech metrical structure matched
the prime meter. In a follow-up study with thirty-four French adults, Cason et al. (2015)
aimed to investigate if this effect could also be found with real sentences in French.
Participants heard a musical rhythmic prime followed by a sentence either with a
matching or mismatching prosodic structure and immediately performed a phoneme
detection task. To check for the possible effect of active production, half the participants
had received audio–motor training with the musical rhythms presented in the
experiment5. Analysis of reaction times showed that phoneme detection was faster with
3 http://www. kodaly.org 4 See also : http://www.aosa.org 5 The audio-motor training is only vaguely described in the article: “[…] the ‘audio-motor’ group (AM group) underwent an additional period of audio-motor training with the rhythmic primes.” (p.45)
8
a matching metrical prime. In addition, authors compared results between the group that
benefited the audio-motor training with the prime against results of the group that only
heard them and found that the priming effect was enhanced in the first group.
In a production experiment, Ludke, Ferreira and Overy (2014) found that a singing
learning method can facilitate short-term memory for phrases in an unknown language
(Hungarian) after a short learning period. Sixty adult participants were randomly
assigned to one of three "listen-and-repeat" learning conditions: speaking, rhythmic
speaking, or singing. Participants in the singing condition showed significantly superior
overall performance on recalling and producing sentences after a 15-min learning period,
as compared with participants in the speaking and rhythmic speaking conditions. Other
possible interfering factors like age, gender, mood6, phonological working memory
ability, or musical ability7 and expertise were controlled for.
In a longitudinal study, Herrera, Lorenzo, Defior, Fernández-Smith, & Costa-Giomi
(2011) tested whether phonological and music training can improve reading readiness in
42 native speakers of Spanish and 52 Tamazight learners of Spanish. They examined
pre-school children during 2 years of either phonological training with music (based on
children’s rhymes and songs) or without music. During post-testing, the first group
significantly outperformed the second group in naming speed and phonological
awareness, which are two strong predictors of reading readiness. Tamazight children
who received training with music developed naming speed skills and phonological
awareness of word endings in Spanish more rapidly than Spanish children in the control
group.
All in all, these studies show evidence that music training may facilitate phonological
awareness and verbal comprehension skills in a second language. Still, very little work
has been done on the potential beneficial effects of music training on L2 pronunciation
abilities.
1.2.2 The acquisition of L2 pronunciation
In this second subsection, we broadly review the literature on the important role of
6 Participants answered a 20-item self-report Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS) mood questionnaire (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988) at the beginning and end of the experimental session. 7 Participants were administered a brief musical ability test (adapted from the musical ability tests developed by Overy, Nicolson, Fawcett, & Clarke (2003).
9
suprasegmental features (rhythm, durational patterns, and pitch patterns) in the
perception of accentedness in a foreign accent. We finally suggest that training with
musical activities could improve those suprasegmental features, as well as general
pronunciation abilities in a second language.
1.2.2.1 The role of suprasegmental features in learner’s comprehensibility,
intelligibility and accentedness
In the classroom, instruction of pronunciation is typically centered around segmental
aspects of speech, that is, on the pronunciation of individual phonemes (see Derwing &
Munro, 2015 for a review). However, when respectively comparing the potential effects
of segmental and suprasegmental deviances on oral language competence in a L2,
suprasegmental deviances tend to influence accentedness, comprehensibility and
intelligibility ratings more than segmental deviances (e.g. Anderson-Hsieh, Johnson, &
Koehler, 1992; Edmunds, 2010; Field, 2005). Specifically, Kang (2010) showed that
suprasegmental features explain a good amount of the variability in accentedness ratings
of foreign speech by native speakers: in his experiment, 41% of the variance in
accentedness ratings was due to pitch range, word stress, and mean length of pauses
while 35% of the variance in comprehensibility ratings was due to speech rate alone.
Along this line, White and Mattys (2007) found that rhythm significantly correlated with
native speakers’ ratings of foreign language in L2 speech.
1.2.2.2 Teaching L2 suprasegmental features
A series of classroom studies in second language acquisition has demonstrated that
teaching the suprasegmental components of speech is important to improving overall
fluency and comprehensibility of language learners. A seminal study by Derwin, Munro
and Wiebe (1998) showed that global pronunciation instruction in the ESL classroom
addressing elements such as speaking rate, intonation, rhythm, and stress at the word
and sentence level during 11 weeks allowed learners to improve significantly in
spontaneous speech, whereas learners who took only segmental or no pronunciation-
specific instruction did not. In a follow-up experiment with a similar design, Derwin and
Rossiter (2003) found that improvement in the global instruction group improved
learner’s comprehensibility and fluency, but not their accentedness. Gordon, Darcy and
10
Ewert (2013) also found that overall comprehensibility improved only for learners in the
suprasegmental group (whose instruction was focused on stress, rhythm, linking and
reductions) after 3 weeks’ training.
These intervention studies provide strong evidence for the important role of
suprasegmental instruction in the L2 classroom for improving learner’s pronunciation
abilities. However, teachers encounter incertitude when the time comes to decide
teaching content, when to teach pronunciation and the method that can be used (see
Foote, Holtby, & Derwing, 2011), despite researchers’ advocating to create a curriculum
dedicated to pronunciation for ESL classes (Darcy, Ewert, & Lidster, 2012). For example,
there is no agreement in the field about how to implement rhythm instruction. A couple
of methods used in the ESL classroom are Graham’s (1978) Jazz chants or Nakata
(2002)’s BossaNova KenMC, where learners are asked to finger-tap out the beats of
short, poem-like structures in order to notice the target rhythm and reproduce it. Still,
there isn’t any assessment showing the improvements based on this method. Even less
has been done to test experimentally concrete aspects of pronunciation instruction, i.e.
intonation or rhythm. Recently, Gluhareva, and Prieto (in press) have proposed that beat
gestures, that is, hand gestures that mark the rhythm of speech, are an effective aid for
L2 acquisition of pronunciation. In a brief within-subjects training study, participants were
asked to watch an English instructor producing a set of target sentences in English within
a discourse situation either accompanied by rhythmic beat gestures or not. Twenty
Catalan participants improved their accentedness significantly on the most difficult
trained items only in the beat perception condition. A follow-up study (Kushch,
Gluhareva, & Prieto, in preparation) has been carried out which investigated whether
participants show higher gains in accent improvement if they are instructed to imitate the
experimenter and produce beat gestures themselves, rather than only observe them. In
the experiment 30 participants were randomly assigned to two groups. In the first group
participants watched the videos in which an instructor gave spontaneous responses to
English discourse prompts with accompanying beat gestures and had to orally repeat
the utterances after the instructor (no-gesture production group). In the second group,
participants watched the same videos and had to repeat the utterances, accompanying
them with beat gestures. The results of this experiment showed that producing beat
gestures had a significant beneficial effect in comparison to gesture observation alone.
While there is a growing body of evidence which shows that learning the prosodic
aspects of a second language can benefit from musical expertise and musical aptitude,
few studies have tried to demonstrate how musical training could enhance pronunciation
11
acquisition. Music has been suggested to appeal to learners’ emotions (Arnold, 1999),
to favor concentration and to stimulate learning in a positive and relaxed atmosphere in
the second language classroom (see Fonseca-Mora, Toscano-Fuentes, & Wermke,
2011). We review this work in the following section.
1.2.3 Hypotheses of the studies: Enhancing L2 pronunciation
In this section, we review a set of studies that are closely related to our project which
deal with rhythmic and singing training and pronunciation in a second language.
1.2.3.1 Rhythm
Training studies with musical rhythm applied to second language pronunciation
acquisition are scarce. To our knowledge, only two studies have been conducted. In a
qualitative study with a set of six advanced learners of English from various language
backgrounds, Fischler (2009) explored the effects of an intensive 4-week training on the
learning of English words and stress patterns through rap music and related activities.
The author reports improvement in stress placement. Unfortunately, without any control
group, it is not possible to ascertain that improvement was due to the musical training
itself.
In a recent book edited by Fonseca-Mora, Pacheco-Costa (2016) explained the
possibilities of the Orff-Schulwerk methodology to improve English pronunciation in
primary school children. The Orff-Schulwerk methodology aims at developing musical
abilities through rhythm, speech, and movement and it is now a widely accepted musical
education method for children (Goodkin, 2004). One part of the method highlights the
principles of musical rhythm and meter through language, in practice, the syllabic
structure of words is translated into musical notation and become rhythmic blocks that
can be combined. Pacheco-Costa suggests applying the Orff-Schulwerk method with
English in the second language classroom by creating such rhythmic blocks and
repeating them while at the same time as marking the beat with a musical instrument.
The next step would be to practice sequences of rhythmic blocks as sayings and rhymes
partnered with their rhythmic notation. The reading should be accompanied by body
percussion, a percussion instrument, and movement. The author also recommends
12
letting students create their own texts based on rhythmic patterns. Finally, she advocates
completing the practice by singing traditional songs and playing around with the lyrics for
these songs.
In the growing field of computer-aided language learning, Wang, Mok, & Meng, (2016)
proposed a very interesting tool based on musical rhythm to support prosody acquisition.
The authors developed a software that automatically generated musical rhythm for a
given text in English. Evaluation of the software showed that sentences produced after
training with the rhythmic cue were rated significantly higher by native English speakers
in terms of native-likeness than the same sentences produced without rhythm training.
Again, however, no control group was tested, and it is also difficult to see how to
implement this very promising tool in a classroom setting, let alone with children.
One of the first hypotheses of this PhD thesis is that rhythmic entrainment with the
prosodic structure of the target L2 language can produce beneficial effects in L2
pronunciation. Moreover, we have empirical evidence that rhythmic entrainment
programs show beneficial effects on speech production in different speech-impaired
populations (see François et al., 2015, for a review), for instance, in dyslexic children
(e.g. Overy, 2000, 2003) or deaf children (e.g. Cason, Hidalgo, Isoard, Roman, & Schön,
2015).
1.2.3.2 Songs
In the language classroom, songs have been used for many decades as a way to learn
new vocabulary and enhance student’s motivation. However, in a vast majority of
studies, the effects of instrumental expertise are examined, excluding singing. Songs
combine elements from speech (phonemes, syllables) and music (melodies and
rhythms). They possess a series of features which draw attention to the sound structure
of their speech elements, and thus could implicitly facilitate speech processing. For
example, speech in songs can sometimes be slower than in normal speech and ease
the comprehension of words and syllables. The repetition of some sequences together
with their rhythmic structure makes the content of the song more predictable and helps
process further details of the song, such as the sound structure of the lyrics. Still, very
few empirical studies have investigated whether songs may facilitate pronunciation
during second language learning.
Toscano-Fuentes and Fonseca (2012) implemented a classroom training with forty-nine
13
Spanish 6th-graders. They added musical activities to the classic ESL curriculum for the
academic year (9 months). Songs were used actively to teach listening comprehension,
vocabulary, grammar and focus on pronunciation whereas instrumental music was used
passively as ambient music. The authors claim that students with high auditory capacity
(measured by the Seashore test) had better results in English in general and in reading
and listening comprehension in particular. In this study, pronunciation abilities were
evaluated by teachers during regular speaking activities. Most importantly, the absence
of a control group does not allow us to assess if the improvements in the five skills under
scrutiny (speaking, reading, listening, writing and grammar) are due to a normal
development after nine month instruction or are increased thanks to the musical
activities, in other words, there isn’t any control group.
Tizian (2016) studied the pronunciation of English words before and after a training with
songs in English. Five Italian learners of English (intermediate/high level) in the
experimental group had to listen and sing along with the songs every two days during
three weeks. Their pronunciation of target words was compared to the production of the
control group’s five participants, who had to read the same target words and a brief
explanation on their pronunciation, with no acoustic input at all. The author comments
that slight improvements on the pronunciation of single words were observed in the
experimental group whereas no improvement were observed in the control group.
Additionally, results showed positive effects for both trainings for participants who had a
low-intermediate level of English and no improvement for participants with higher
proficiency. Importantly, the fact that the control group did not receive any acoustic input
means that the results of both groups are hardly comparable.
Nemoto, Wilson, and Perkins (2016) investigated whether English pronunciation by
Japanese speakers improved more after training with spoken or sung sentences. 30
participants trained their pronunciation individually during 10 minutes either by listening
to an English song and singing themselves or by listening to the lyrics of the song spoken
by a native speaker. Results showed that participants in the sung condition performed
significantly worse at post-test than participants in the spoken condition. The authors
suggest that the fact that participants in the experimental group only heard the song’s
melody, and not the English language melody, negatively influenced the production of
the sentences’ prosody at posttest. This could constitute a reasonable explanation, since
the participants did not hear the spoken sentence and therefore never had the
opportunity to listen to the prosody of the target sentences.
All in all, given the scarcity of studies on the topic, further experiments, both in the
14
laboratory and in a classroom setting, are still needed to assess the influence of songs
on pronunciation. The promising findings by Christiner and Reiterer (2015) on the
superior skills in language imitation by singers constitute potential evidence on the
benefits of singing for boosting second language pronunciation abilities.
1.3 Objectives
Based on extensive research on the commonalities between music and language (see
Theoretical framework, 1.3.1), authors in the field of second language acquisition have
shown interest in the possible benefits of musical activities in the foreign language
classroom. However, as shown in section 1.2.3, very little work has been carried out on
the potential positive effects of songs and rhythmic activities on L2 pronunciation
specifically.
The objectives of this thesis derive from the findings of the review of the literature outlined
above. The idea behind this thesis is that, given that musicians have clear advantages
for speech processing tasks, it is not unrealistic to think that that training with melodies
and rhythm should benefit all types of students. In general, this thesis has a triple aim,
separated in three experimental studies. First, to assess whether musical activities
related to rhythm and pitch (like hand-clapping or singing) can improve pronunciation in
a second language, both with two short training experiments and a longer intervention
experiment. A final second objective of the thesis is to explore the relationship between
children’s musical aptitudes/expertise and other cognitive and linguistic abilities and their
pronunciation in the second language. Finally, we would like to prepare an educational
interface to provide language teachers with experimentally tested teaching tools that can
be easily integrated in the second language classroom at the primary school level.
The PhD thesis will be comprised of three studies. In the first study, I would like to show
that a short rhythmic training highlighting the rhythmic structure of words in a second
language (French) can improve the pronunciation of these words. A second study will
assess the effects of a short training with songs on the acquisition of a second language
both at the word and sentence levels. The third intervention study will consist in testing
whether a long training with rhythmic and melodic activities in the classroom (8 sessions
during 4 weeks) where the children will learn basic French words and sentences.
Children will be assessed for the following individual skills, which will be assessed in the
final correlational study: speech skills in a second language (phonological perception,
15
foreign speech imitation) are correlated with musical skills (musical experience, musical
aptitude, and musical production), linguistic skills (narrative task) and cognitive skills
(working memory).
1.4 Theoretical framework(s)
1.4.1 Music and language: two faces of the same coin?
The commonalities and differences between language and music have been examined
from different perspectives. For example, the anthropologist Steven Mithen (2005)
argues that the human beings are musical in nature, under the hypothesis that a musical
and physical expressive protolanguage preceded modern human linguistic abilities.
Functions of music and language in society have been and still are fundamental,
especially during the first years of life (Trehub, 2003) although their functions seem to
differ. Put simply, we consider that the functions of language are typically communicative
- express our thoughts about the present, the past or the future; and music is a channel
for expressing emotions and feelings. Nevertheless, research on common structural
properties between music and syntax or prosody is growing (see Heffner & Slevc, 2015,
for a review). Neuroscientific studies have successfully proved that music and language
use common networks in the brain (see Jäncke, 2012, for a review). In a seminal study,
Besson and Schön (2001) conducted a series of ERPs studies and found that syntactic
violations in language and harmonic violations in music elicited similar effects at the
P600 component. Neuroimaging studies have shown that the brain regions that play a
crucial role in language (Broca and Wernicke’s areas) are also activated during music
processing (e.g. Abrams et al., 2010; Levitin & Menon, 2003; Maess, Koelsch, Gunter,
& Friederici, 2001; Vuust, Ostergaard, Pallesen, Bailey, & Roepstorff, 2009). Kotilahti et
al., (2010) also showed evidence that neural activity in infants overlapped for infant-
directed speech and instrumental music.
All these findings may not come as a surprise when considering the common tangible
properties between speech and music. Both are sequential auditory signals that unfold
in time, according to determined rules (syntax/harmony) and displaying the same
acoustic parameters (frequency, duration, intensity, and timber). Similar to music, the
central elements in speech prosody are rhythm (stress and timing) and melody
(intonation) (Nooteboom, 1997). Hence in the last decades the development of a wide
and dynamic field of research has started to successfully explore the benefit of musical
16
expertise, musical aptitude, and musical training on a variety of language-specific
abilities (see section 1.2.1 above).
1.4.2 Cross-domain auditory plasticity
The present thesis relies on the notion of cross-domain plasticity. This term refers to the
changes in neural processing in one domain driven by experience or training in another
domain, here music and speech. Strait and Kraus (2011) and Besson, Chobert, & Marie
(2011) provide exhaustive reviews of studies showing that musicians present enhanced
auditory attention and working memory and studies investigating the overlap in the brain
networks involved in music and speech for auditory attention and working memory. Patel
(2014) formulates the hypothesis that the demands placed on sensory and cognitive
processing by long musical practice provoke a change in plasticity in the brain networks
involved in speech processing. More precisely, certain conditions need to be fulfilled for
this change to take place. First, the transfer can only concern musical and speech
features (e.g. waveform periodicity, amplitude envelope) that are dealt in brain networks
shared by the two domains. Second, the practice of music augments in complexity so
that it places higher demands on the process in question than speech does. Third, the
musical activities that activate this process also induce positive emotion, focused
attention and repetition of the features.
Longitudinal experiments assessing the effect of musical training on non-musician adults
or children have shown that training has an effect and that the improved abilities are not
due to genetic predispositions for music (Hyde et al., 2009; Moreno et al., 2009).
Supporting this hypothesis, Musacchia, Strait, and Kraus (2008) reported positive
correlations between the number of years of musical practice and the strength of
subcortical pitch encoding as well as with the amplitude of ERPs cortical components.
If in each domain, rhythm can modulate attention time in such a way that processing
efficiency is influenced, and that this effect may well be possible across domains. For
example, a series of studies by Cason and collaborators (Cason et al., 2015; Cason et
al., 2015; Cason & Schön, 2012)’s priming studies showed that the phonological
processing of speech is enhanced by the temporal expectations generated by a musical
rhythmic prime. Another study giving support to the hypothesis that musical rhythm can
have a cross-domain impact on speech processing has been realized by Gordon,
Magne, & Large (2011), who demonstrated that temporal alignment between musical
17
meter in song and stressed syllables in the song lyrics facilitates their comprehension by
synchronizing neural activity with strong syllables.
Additionally, Boll-Avetisyan, Bhatara, and Hoele (2017) investigated the effect of musical
aptitudes on rhythmic grouping in speech and found that musical rhythm perception
abilities are associated with a more consistent grouping of speech.
1.4.2.1 Musical rhythm and speech rhythm
Musical rhythm and language rhythm represent the organization of acoustic events in a
time scale, with a regular succession of strong and weak elements and a regular
framework in which they appear. Beat, meter and tempo are the elements of rhythm.
Beat is the basic unit of time in music, often defined as the rhythm one instinctively
reproduces by tapping with a finger or foot while listening to music. When beats are
organized into recurring stress and unstressed patterns, a meter appears. Tempo
represents the speed of the beat (J. London, 2012). Infants can perceive meter and
classify musical rhythm from an early age (Hannon & Johnson, 2005). This preference
persists: Bolton (1894) showed that we automatically apply a metrical structure when
listening to an isosynchronous sequence of identical sounds, with the illusion of
perceiving a sequence of strong and weak elements.
In a similar way, salient and non-salient syllables in speech create the metrical
organization of utterances. Although speech is not as regular as music (Patel, 2008), it
is possible to find a certain degree of rhythmic regularity and predictability. Rhythmic
recurrences seem to be based on language-specific patterns, which are partially
dependent on syllable structure and vowel reduction characteristics (Dauer, 1983;
Roach, 1982). For example, some languages distinguish between different levels of
prosodic stress with different functions (e.g. lexical stress, phrasal stress, and emphatic
stress), as well as different degrees of stress (e.g. primary and secondary lexical stress;
and high, low, or complex pitch stress).
In both domains, rhythm allows a listener to form predictions about what will happen
next. For instance, upon hearing a ternary metrical sequence in music (123 123 123),
we expect that the same ‘123’ (weak–weak–strong) pattern will follow. A study by Pitt
and Samuel (1990) demonstrated that hearing a list of trisyllabic words with a final stress
induced expectations for a word with the same meter. As a result, auditory events
occurring at these predictable locations get more attention (Large & Jones, 1999; Justin
18
London, 2012; Snyder & Large, 2005) and are better processed (Ellis & Jones, 2010;
Jones, Boltz, & Kidd, 1982, among others).
1.4.2.2 Songs and cross-domain plasticity
In a review by Teixido, François, Bosch, and Männel (in press), the authors highlight that
songs are relevant for speech segmentation and word learning. Songs present
exaggerated language-specific stress patterns that may help infants acquire linguistic
traits of their target language (Brandt, Gebrian, & Slevc, 2012; Hannon, Lévêque, Nave,
& Trehub, 2016). Infants have been shown to present a clear preference for infant-
directed songs over adult-directed songs (Unyk, Trehub, Trainor, & Schellenberg, 1992).
Importantly, song melody seems to specifically benefit speech processing as well as
language acquisition (e.g. Lebedeva & Kuhl, 2010; D. Schön et al., 2008).
According to Patel (2014), any impact of singing-based training on speech abilities could
be partly or wholly due to within-domain plasticity, i.e., to the effects of the linguistic
components of song. Rate, repetition, rhythm, and rhyme act to highlight the sound
structure of language. Hence finding an impact of singing-based training on the brain’s
processing of speech could be largely due to within-domain plasticity.
1.4.3 Embodied cognition
The three training studies in this thesis also rely on a fundamental paradigm, e.g. the
embodied cognition paradigm. Broadly, embodied cognition underlines the importance
of event perception and body actions in cognitive processes. Under this approach,
cognitive processes are conditioned by perceptual and motor modalities (Borghi &
Caruana, 2015). In other words, any knowledge relies on the reactivation of external
states (perception) and internal states (proprioception, emotion, and introspection) as
well as bodily actions (simulation of the sensorimotor experience with the object or event
to which they refer). Much research on this domain, especially in neuroscience, has
shown brain activation of motor and perception networks when participants were
engaged in different tasks involving abilities such as memory, knowledge, language or
thought (see Barsalou, 2008, for a review). By highlighting the importance of appropriate
sensory and motor interactions during learning for the efficient development of human
cognition, embodied cognition has crucial implication for education (see Kiefer & Trumpp,
2012; Wellsby & Pexman, 2014, for reviews). In this filed, researchers have explored
19
embodiment related to reading and writing, memory for events and conceptual memory
for objects and for numbers (Kiefer & Trump, 2012). Several training studies in preschool
children and adults showed that writing new letters by hand improved subsequent letter
recognition and discrimination more than typing training (see Mangen & Velay, 2010, for
a review). The reactivation of sensory-motor experiences collected during an active
learning phase seems crucial for memory performance. For example, Engelkamp and
Jahn (2003) found that participants remembered a list of action verbs better when they
performed these actions during the training compared to only reading the list. Senkfor,
Van Petten, and Kutas (2002) also found an enhancing effect of observing actions on
memory for events, compared with reading the action words. Concerning the conceptual
memory for objects, Neuroimaging and electrophysiological studies have provided
evidence that sensory-motor brain areas are activated during the processing of words
and concepts (see Kiefer & Pulvermüller, 2012, for a review). As for counting, one study
by Fischer, Moeller, Bientzle, Cress, & Nuerk (2011) demonstrated that training children
in finger counting accelarated their learning of numbers and had positive effects on their
subsequent skills in mathematics.
Other aspects of learning need to be investigated in their relation to embodiment.For
example, Baills, Suárez-González, & Prieto (submitted) explored the effect of observing
and producing pitch gestures in the learning of Chinese tones in a training study with
respectively, 49 and 54 Catalan participants. Pitch gestures are hand gestures spacially
describing the melodic curves of the tones, therefore they can be considered as the
embodiment of the prosody of tone-words. Results show that a training with observation
of the pitch gestures enhanced tone discrimination and tone-word learning more than a
training with no gestures and that a training with the production of pitch gestures
enhanced tone discrimination and tone-word learning more than a training with
observation of gestures and repeating the words aloud. However no significant
differences were found between producing and observing the gestures. Yuan, González-
Fuente, Baills, & Prieto (under review) also looked at how pitch gestures can help the
learning of Spanish intonation by sixty-four Mandarin Chinese learners. Half of the
participants received intonation training without gestures while the other half received
the same training with pitch gestures representing nuclear intonation contours. Results
showed that observing pitch gestures during the learning phase improved prononciation
sikills significantly better than a training without gestures.
20
1.5 Hypotheses, assumptions, or background ideas
The ideas to be tested in this PhD thesis are based on a number of assumptions, which
have been explained above. An important assumption behind the three studies is that
there are important similarities between sentence prosody and musical phrases and that
we can use this potential for L2 pronunciation training. While the first two studies build
on the usefulness of hand-clapping and singing for L2 pronunciation, the third
intervention study builds on the potential effects of general musical training on L2
pronunciation improvement in an educational setting.
1.5.1 Phonological differences between Catalan and French
For the three studies, French will be used as the target L2 language for Catalan-dominant
children. This choice is due to the contrasting prosodic and segmental characteristics
between French and Catalan. Even though the two languages are syllable-timed
languages (Ramus, Dupoux, & Mehler, 2003; Ramus, Nespor, & Mehler, 1999), while
stress has a distinctive function in Catalan (e.g., fugir 'to flee' vs fugi '(s)he flees-subj'),
in French it is demarcative at the phrasal level (that is, stresses mark beginnings and
ends of prosodic phrases). Specifically, at the word/accentual phrase level, French
possesses (a) a fixed stress located at the final syllable of a prosodic phrase which
consists either of a rise in F0 and/or lengthening of the final syllable; and (b) an optional
secondary phrasal stress in the initial position which consists of an F0 rise with no
lengthening (Welby, 2006; Jun & Fougeron, 2000, 2002). In French, both demarcative
stresses can be used as cues for segmentation (Banel & Bacri, 1994; Spinelli, Grimault,
Meunier, & Welby, 2010).
1.5.2 Musical activities in the second language classroom as part of pronunciation
training
The principal motivations behind the experiments developed in this thesis are threefold.
First, Studies 1 and 2 aim at testing behaviorally and in a laboratory setting, the potential
benefits of music on speech, following convincing findings from neuroscientific studies
concerning the effect of music expertise, aptitude and training on a number of perceptual
21
and productive skills (see section 1.2.1). Second, Study 3 will try to apply the methods
independently tested in Studies 1 and 2 (e.g., hand-clapping and singing), together with
general musical training in a more natural setting, the second-language classroom, and
in a longer format of intervention in order to extend the possible findings and show their
applicability. Finally, Study 4 is to be a complementary correlational study on the
relationship between pronunciation abilities in a second language with musical aptitudes
and other cognitive and linguistic skills.
1.5.2.1 Hand-clapping as the body externalization of word prosody
The two assumptions behind the first study of the thesis is that (a) there is a clear link
between musical rhythmic perception and metrical groupings of speech; and (b) that
highlighting the rhythmic structure of words through hand-clapping could facilitate the
auditory perception of this word, increase phonological awareness, and eventually lead
to better pronunciation.
McNeill (1992) observed how children produced beat gestures on each syllable of a word
when searching for an unfamiliar word and suggested that beat gesture has a
metalinguistic function for children until they are 5 years of age. McCafferty (2006)
suggested that beat gestures accompanying speech in a second language helped
speakers to externalize prosodic features of the L2 in order to better control them. A
simple way to make the internal rhythm of words salient is to mark each syllable by
clapping one’s hand in the same way as one might clap the beat of a song.
Along these lines, the hypothesis for the first experiment proposes that hand-clapping
the rhythm of words may help children to raise their awareness on the pronunciation of
foreign words.
1.5.2.2 Singing as a facilitator to memorize and produce foreign words and
sentences
Empirical work comparing rhythmic and melodic structure across music and language
have shown that instrumental music composed by a French artist, for example, bears
the same durational and pitch characteristics as the corresponding French speech
(Patel, 2012; Patel & Daniele, 2003; Patel, Iversen, & Rosenberg, 2006). Additionally,
22
Christiner and Reiterer (2015) showed that the vocal flexibility of singers plays a
significant role in speech imitation. Therefore, I hypothesize that second language
training which includes singing (and not only speaking) can help fine-tune vocal-motor
training abilities that can translate into better pronunciation patterns of foreign words and
sentences.
2. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Although studies 1, 2, and 3 will have different methodologies, participants will have the
same profile in the three studies and I will apply the same control tasks. Therefore, I will
start with a common section that describes the two.
2.1 Participants
Participants of the three studies will be 7 or 8-year old children in their second grade
attending a public or semi-public Catalan school. They are all bilingual Spanish-Catalan
speakers with Catalan being their predominant language of daily use, as reported in a
language exposure questionnaire given to parents based on Bosch & Sebastián-Gallés
(2001). Second graders at school typically have two-hour weekly exposure to English as
a second language and also musical education for one hour. We also made sure that
participants had no previous knowledge of the French language. Moreover, the language
questionnaire was expanded with a set of questions related to language and music
expertise such as whether the child is learning to play an instrument, to sing, to read
music, or to dance, how long has he/she been learning, the amount of music the child is
generally exposed to during the week, etc. (see Appendix A for the language and musical
experience questionnaire).
2.2 Control tests
In order to take into account individual differences, a series of control tests will be applied
for all participants. These behavioral tests will be run in a separate session approximately
one week before the children go through the experimental pre-test/training/post-test
tasks.
23
2.2.1 Memory span test
A standardized way of measuring short term memory capacity, also called memory span,
is to present a sequence of numbers, letters, or words aloud to a person/child at the rate
of about 1 second per item. The participant is instructed to repeat the sequence verbally,
either in the order each item was presented or in a backward order (Bunting, Cowan, &
Saults, 2006). The length of the sequence is continually increased until the person is
correct only 50% of the time. Following Henry, Messer, Luger-Klein & Crane’s (2012)
procedure, memory span is measured in terms of the maximum number of words from
the list that the child can recall.
In our case, for children aged 7-8, the memory span test consisted of a list of target
Catalan words, translated from the Spanish version of MacArthur communicative
developmental test (López-Ornat et al, 2005). These words are considered as acquired
already at the age of 30 months. It started with a list of three items, which was followed
by a list of four, a list of five, and so on (see Appendix B). This procedure continued until
the child could no longer succeed in recalling all the words in the list. Once the maximum
list length seemed to have been reached, the child was told to remember four lists of the
same length but consisting of different words.
This number of words was regarded as the child’s memory span if all the items were
recalled in at least three out of the four lists.
2.2.2 Narrative ability: story retelling task
Narratives are typically used as a measure of a child’s language abilities and can be
used as a detector of possible language pathologies in children (Demir, Rowe, Heller,
Levine, & Goldin-Meadow, 2015, among others). Better narrative abilities at an early age
(accounted by a well-designed structure) could predict later literacy development,
reading comprehension, and academic performance (Demir & Küntay, 2014). As noted
by Demir and Küntay (2014), around 5 to 6 years of age children begin to create stories
that more reliably include the main components of a story line and start to be able to
refer to the story’s goals.
Materials for this control test consist of one animated cartoon without dialogue or
narration (approximate length 41-50 s) about a small mouse and an elephant, characters
with which the child are not familiar. The structure follows the narratives used in studies
such as Demir et al. (2015): first, some initiating event presents a goal or challenge to
24
the protagonist. This provokes an action on the character’s part, which leads to a
particular outcome. After watching the clip, the child is asked to retell the story to the
experimenter.
To obtain a measure of narrative proficiency, four main features will be considered
(Demir et al., 2015): the presence of an animate protagonist, temporal structure, causal
structure, and goal-directed action. Each feature is considered to be a prerequisite for
the next, and thus narratives with more of these features are rated more complex than
stories with fewer of them. The rubric used to score the narratives produced by
participants are detailed in Appendix C and replicate the grid used in Vilà-Giménez,
Igualada, and Prieto (submitted).
2.2.3. Speech imitation task
Speech imitation talent and pronunciation skills in a foreign language may be highly
interdependent, as suggested by Nardo & Reiterer (2009). To test the children’s ability
to spontaneously imitate non-native speech, we elaborated an imitation task with target
words of different lengths in seven different languages, all completely unknown to the
participants: German, Hebrew, Tagalog, Chinese, Russian, Turkish and Greek. A total
of fourteen words (2 in each language, between 2 and 6 syllables long) were recorded
in a soundproof room by native speakers of those languages.
Each child was asked to listen to each word twice and repeat it immediately. Words were
presented in a randomized order using the automatic shuffle option in Microsoft
PowerPoint.
The raters, expert phoneticians, will be instructed to use headphones and to rate the
imitation ability of the child production on a scale from 1 (very different) to 7 (no difference
at all) immediately after listening to a file which consists of the pair adult target word
followed by the child production.
2.2.4 Perceptual discrimination task
To ensure that participants correctly perceived the language input during the trainings of
studies 1, 2 and 3, or to detect possible problems, children's perceptual discrimination
abilities were assessed through a phonological discrimination task developed for French
25
children at the Department of Orthophony8 of Lille University, France.
The test consists of listening to pairs of nonsense words respecting French phonotactic
rules and telling if the words were the same or different (see Appendix D). The final score
is the sum of the correct answers.
2.2.5 Musical expertise
In a procedure similar to Boll-Avetisyan et al. (2017), musical expertise is measured
using a composite score that combines information from a music questionnaire filled out
by parents (see Appendix A) and some questions which are included in the PROMS test
(see section 2.2.6 below) about the number of learned musical instruments (including
voice for singing and body for dancing), the age of acquiring a first instrument, the total
number of years of musical training, and the frequency of listening to music.
2.2.6 Musical aptitude
2.2.6.1 Evaluation of musical perception
Sometimes, relying on musical expertise and the information given by participants on
their musical background is not enough to grasp musical perceptive skills, because
musically untrained individuals may possess high musical skills, and conversely some
musicians may not be as skilled in perception tasks as expected by their extended
musical training. To test the musical perceptive aptitude of the participants, we chose to
use the PROMS test (Profile of Music Perception Skills). The test was developed by Law
and Zentner (2012) to measure perceptual musical skills across multiple domains:
melody, pitch, timbre, tuning, rhythm, rhythm-in-melody, metric accent, and tempo. The
PROMS has satisfactory psychometric properties for the composite score (internal
consistency and test-retest >.85) and fair to good coefficients for the individual subtests
(.56 to .85). Each subtest corresponding to a musical domain is composed of 18 items;
however, the test can be tailored for children with 8-10 items per subtest.
For reasons of time and for the children to remain concentrated, we chose to take
8 http://orthophonie.univ-lille2.fr/fr/stocks/stock-contents/epreuve-lilloise-de-discrimination-phonologique
26
measure of only the most important subtests in function of the focus of each experiment.
For Study 1 on the effects of hand-clapping the rhythm of words, the chosen subtests
were rhythm and metric accent. For Study 2 on exploring the effects of singing, the
chosen subtests were melody and rhythm. For study three, we plan to use the subtests
rhythm, melody, rhythm, and meter accent.
The results of the tests give a composite score that represent musical perceptive
aptitude.
2.2.6.2 Evaluation of musical production
To assess musical production abilities, we chose to use a series of rhythms; all on an 8-
beat measure to which children had to listen and try to reproduce immediately. The score
consists of the total number of rhythms each child could correctly reproduce.
2.3 Study 1
Study 1 is a between-subjects French word learning experiment with a pre-test and post-
test design aimed at testing the effects of hand-clapping the rhythmic structure of words
on the pronunciation of transparent French words. It relies on the results of experiments
by Cason and colleagues (Nia Cason et al., 2015; Nia Cason & Schön, 2012) showing
that rhythmic priming enhances the phonological processing of speech.
2.3.1 Research question
Does a short training with handclapping the rhythmic structure of words enhance
pronunciation acquisition?
2.3.2 Methodology
2.3.1.1. Participants
27
Thirty 7-8 year-old children from Girona, Catalonia, were trained to learn and repeat 20
target words in French whose meanings were transparent for Catalan speakers in one
of two conditions, namely with or without hand-clapping. They also underwent the control
tests described in 2.2. At this stage, I have collected the data from all the children.
2.3.1.2. Materials
The experiment has a pre/post-test design. One of the first tasks was to select the target
French words for the training phase, as well as the pre- and posttest target French words.
The training was composed of French words directed to Catalan native children.
2.3.1.2.1 Selection of French words
As mentioned before, there are many salient contrasting prosodic and segmental
characteristics between French and Catalan, most notably final stress and a variety of
sounds that are not present in Catalan. To select the target French words for the training,
pre-test and post-test phases, the following considerations were taken:
- Given that children do not have any knowledge of French, the target form of the selected
words should be transparent to Catalan (avió/avion, ordenador/ordinateur)
- The selected words should include the most frequent consonant and vowel sounds in
the target language, in different positions, in order to offer an ample range of possible
sound combinations in the target language
- The selected words includes monosyllabic, disyllabic, and trisyllabic structures
- The total number of words should not be excessive in order to avoid fatigue in the
subjects
- To ensure transparency, the selected words can be represented visually
Initially, a total of forty words were selected. These were rated for “word transparency”
(that is, their phonological proximity to the Catalan corresponding word) by a total of 38
Catalan native speakers through an online survey software. Raters were asked to listen
to the recording of the word in French and rate the degree of transparency between the
target words from 1 to 5 (1= very transparent, 2= quite transparent 3= somewhat
transparent 4= lightly transparent, and 5= Not transparent). For each target word, the
28
image illustrating the word was in the center.
The twenty words which were rated as most transparent (and ensuring a balance of
syllabic structures) were finally chosen as items for the training (see Appendix E). As for
the selection of the twenty items in the pre-test, 10 words from the training were selected
according to their syllable structure and their representativeness of segmental difficulties
in French. Ten additional unrelated words were also selected with the same requirement.
For the post-test, the 10 related items were the same as in the pre-test, 5 unrelated items
were selected from the pre-test and 5 new items were added (see Appendix E for the
total list of words in the training, pre-test, and post-test).
2.3.1.2.2 Audiovisual recordings of the training materials
The training consisted of a video where two French instructors presented the training
items in the two conditions (e.g., clapping vs non-clapping condition). The target words
were video-recorded at the professional broadcasting studio of Universitat Pompeu
Fabra with the help of a technician and subsequently edited in Premiere Pro to create
the training videos.
Each training video clip first contained a short introduction by a native speaker of Catalan
to explain the task to the participants. After this, the target words in the pre-test and then
two repetitions of the 20 items. Each trial was presented in an audiovisual format and
preceded by a picture representing the meaning of the word. After this, two occurrences
of the target word were followed by a 5-second black screen where participants had the
opportunity to repeat the word.
29
Figure 1. Procedure of item presentation in the clapping and the non-clapping conditions.
The twenty items were presented alternately by the two instructors and during the two
trials, participants had the chance to listen and repeat each word after both instructors.
Additionally, for each condition, six video clips were produced with different orders of
presentation of the items to avoid any recency or saliency effects.
2.3.1.2.3 Audio material for the pre and post-tests
The selected items for the pre and post-tests were recorded in audio only by a French
native speaker using an audio recorder.
2.3.1.3. Procedure
A summary of the procedure can be seen in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Experimental procedure of study 2.
2.3.1.3.1 Procedure for the pre- and post-test
Children were individually tested at a quiet room at escola Masmitjà, the participating
public school in Girona.
In both the pretest and the post-test, participants were tested with an adaptation of the
30
elicited imitation task (EIT). Also known as the sentence repetition task, it is a reliable
measure of L2 proficiency in L2 acquisition research, particularly for assessing the oral
modality. It reflects the ease with which spoken language is comprehended and
produced (Van Moere, 2012). In this experiment, sentences were discarded after
preliminary trials which showed that children were not able to repeat unknown sentences.
Therefore, we only used words.
Participants had to follow a user-friendly “words” path prepared on a Powerpoint slide
(see Figure 3), where arrows indicated in which order they needed to click on the sound
icon for each word. They pressed on the icon directly on the screen, listened to the word,
repeated the word immediately after hearing it and then pressed the next icon. The task
was self-paced but the experimenter was always present to monitor the task. The
children's productions were recorded through a high quality microphone.
Figure 3. Words “path” where children clicked on to listen to each item of the pre- and
posttests.
The post-test was composed of a word recall/phonological memory task and a EIT with
a similar procedure as in the pre-test. The word recall/phonological memory task
consisted of showing the pictures representing the words in the training to the children
to discover how many words they could remember. The target words were also recorded.
2.3.1.3.2 Procedure for the training phase
Children were randomly assigned either to the control condition, where they only had to
repeat the words after the instructors during the training, or to the experimental hand-
clapping condition, where they had to repeat the target word uttered by the instructor
31
while hand-clapping its rhythm. In the video clip, before the training started, a native
speaker of Catalan explained the task to the child. Then two trial words were used for
familiarization with the task. After this, participants were asked to learn and repeat a
series of French words in the following way (see also Figure XX for the experimental
procedure):
1) first, they see an image of the word they will learn,
2) second, they see an instructor pronounce the word in French twice (control
condition) or they see an instructor pronounce the word in French twice while
handclapping the rhythm of the word (experimental condition),
3) third, they repeat the word (control condition) or they repeat the word while they
mimic the rhythmic handclapping made by the instructor (experimental condition).
The training session lasted around 10 minutes and around 20 minutes with the pre-test
and post-test. The whole experiment (including control tasks) lasted around 60 minutes.
2.3.1.4 Pronunciation ratings of the pre-test and post-test items
This phase of the experiment has not been completed yet. Pre and post-tests
productions will be presented in pairs to four native speakers of French, who will rate
them simultaneously on an accentedness scale from 1 to 7. Raters will be unaware about
the fact that words will be produced before or after the training.
Mean pronunciation improvement will be compared across conditions. We expect that
the hand-clapping condition will be more effective than the control condition. Moreover,
a potential improvement on the pronunciation of unrelated items will mean that
knowledge was generalized during the training.
2.4 Study 2
Nemoto, Wilson, & Perkins (2016) investigated whether listening to an English song
could be more effective than listening to speech in improving the English pronunciation
of Japanese learners of English. They unexpectedly found that training with speech was
more effective. However, the training item consisted only in one sentence and
participants were not familiar with the melody. Moreover, it seems that participants only
trained their pronunciation with the song and never heard the sentence pronounced in
32
regular speech. Additionally, the authors do not provide much information on the training,
except that participants trained on their own with the material during 10 minutes. Despite
these negative results, there are arguments in favor of the positive effect of songs on
speech abilities (e.g. Moreno et al., 2009; Schön et al., 2004). Study 2 will investigate
whether children improve more on French pronunciation after training on sung or spoken
sentences extracted from children songs whose melody is widely known.
2.4.1 Research Question
Does singing in a second language enhance pronunciation acquisition?
2.4.2 Methodology
This experiment is a short training study with a pre- and post-test design. Participants
will be individually tested at participating schools. The singing/speech training will last
around 20 minutes. Participants will watch a video and learn the lyrics of three French
songs for children whose melody is widely known in European countries, for example
Brother John, Happy Birthday, or Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. The training will consist in
short prosodic/musical phrases that the children must hear and repeat in either the sung
condition (singing), or in the spoken condition, where the lyrics of the song are
pronounced in normal speech (speaking). As in Study 1, during pre and post-tests,
participants will have to repeat a number of French words that are either related or
unrelated to the training items.
After the experiment, children's pre and post-tests productions will be presented in pairs
to 4 native speakers of French who will rate them on an accentedness scale from 1 to 7
without knowing whether they were produced before or after the training. A comparison
between the rates of improvement of the two groups will allow us to test whether the
rhythmic training is more effective. Moreover, an improvement on unrelated items will
mean that knowledge was generalized during the training.
2.4.3 Materials
As in Study 1, two instructors will be recorded either in the singing or the non-singing
condition. The video of the training will feature the upper body of the instructor and
33
display the items in sequences. After each sequence, the participant will have to repeat
the item.
The word imitation task will include words learned during the training and also items that
are unrelated. Items should be of different length and cover the range of difficulties of
French pronunciation, especially the features that are known to be challenging for
Catalan speakers. The items for the tests will be recorded in a sound proof room by two
native speakers of French.
2.5 Study 3
This study aims to transfer our research interest on musical effects on pronunciation
learning to a more ecological setting, i.e. the language classroom. The classroom study
by Fonseca-Mora, Jara-Jiménez, and Gómez-Domíngez (2015) focused on reading in
English as a second language. The authors couldn’t show a significantly higher effect of
a phonological training program compared to phonological training without music.
Toscana-Fuentes and Fonseca Mora (2012) implemented a sound-music program of
English as a second language with six-graders. The authors suggested that this program
improved students’ listening comprehension, speaking, reading, and motivation.
However, they didn’t perform any quantitative analysis to confirm the findings of their
qualitative analysis. The aim of Study 3 will be to focus only on one aspect of language
learning – pronunciation – and to evaluate the effects of the musical training on this
specific linguistic aspect.
2.5.1 Research Question
Does (1) language training in the classroom with integrated active musical activities
related to the phonological structure of the language; and (2) language training in the
classroom preceded by active musical activities unrelated to the phonological structure
of the language enhance acquisition of the pronunciation of words and simple sentences
by children more than language training with games only?
2.5.2 Methodology
34
The third study of this thesis aims to analyze pronunciation achievements in a L2 after a
relatively short training with 7-8 year-old children, with a pre-posttest design. The training
will last 4 weeks. During each week, participants will attend two 45-minute sessions in
groups of 10. The experiment will take place at their school. The total length of the
experiment will be 8 weeks, counting data collection during pre- and posttests.
There will be three conditions: in the “game” group, participants will learn 25 French
words and sentences through games, based on a French language method9 designed
to develop children’s auditory and speaking skills primarily. There will be no writing or
reading activities. In the “integrated music group”, rhythmic and melodic activities will be
integrated into the teaching of the same 25 words and sentences following the same
method. Finally, in the “consecutive music group”, rhythmic and melodic activities will
precede the learning of 25 French words with games.
As in Studies 1 and 2, the pretest will consist of an Elicited Imitation task (EIT) with words
that will be learned during the training and words unrelated to the training. The post-test
will reproduce the same EIT and add to the words present in the pre-test some short
sentences learned during the training, as well as completely new words. Word recall and
phonological memory of the training items will also be assessed at post-test in a picture-
naming task.
2.5.3. Materials
2.5.3.1Training sessions
The eight training sessions will be planned carefully to make sure that the only difference
between interventions in the three conditions will be the musical activities. The lesson
plans will be largely inspired from the language method for children Ludo et ses Amis,
which is mostly oriented towards oral skills in French for young beginners. Appendix F is
an example of the lesson plan for the first session under the three conditions.
2.5.3.2 Pre and posttest items
Among the 25 items that will be part of the word and sentence imitation task, there will
be words and sentences learnt during the training and also items that are not covered at
9 Marchois, C. (2015). Ludo et ses amis – Méthode de Français. Paris: Editions Didier.
35
all. Items should be of different length and cover the range of difficulties of French
pronunciation, especially the features that are known to be challenging for Catalan
speakers. The items for the tests will be recorded in a sound proof room by two native
speakers of French.
For the rating, pre and post-tests productions will be presented in pairs to 4 native
speakers of French who will rate them on an accentedness scale from 1 to 7 without
knowing whether words were produced before or after the training. A comparison
between the rates of improvement of the two groups will allow us to assess whether the
non-integrated music group or the integrated music group is more effective than the
control group. Moreover, an improvement on unrelated items will mean that knowledge
has been generalized during the training.
2.6 Study 4
Following studies by Reiterer and colleagues (Reiterer et al. 2011, Christiner & Reiterer,
2013) on speech imitation talent and musical expertise and aptitude, this study aims at
replicating findings by these authors with children, focusing on perceptive and productive
differences. Retereir et al. (2011) showed a very clear connection between musicality in
general and an ability to pronounce and imitate in a second language. Christiner and
Reiterer (2013) found that singing performance is a better indicator of the ability to imitate
speech than the playing of a musical instrument. Moreover, their results revealed that
64% of the speech imitation score variance could be explained by working memory
together with educational background and singing performance and that 66% of the
speech imitation variance of completely unintelligible and unfamiliar language stimuli
(Hindi) could be explained by working memory together with a singer’s sense of rhythm
and quality of voice. A last study will consist of a correlational analysis of the individual
data collected in the experiments and assess whether speech skills in a second language
(phonological perception, foreign speech imitation) are correlated with musical skills
(musical experience, musical aptitude, musical production), linguistic skills (narrative
task) and cognitive skills (working memory).
This last study will therefore consists of a correlational analysis of the individual data
collected in the experiments and assess whether speech skills in a second language
(phonological perception, foreign speech imitation) are correlated with musical skills
36
(musical experience, musical aptitude, musical production), linguistic skills (narrative
task) and cognitive skills (working memory).
2.6.1 Research Questions
Are speech skills in a second language (phonological perception, foreign speech
imitation) correlated with musical skills (musical expertise, musical perceptive aptitude,
musical productive aptitude), linguistic skills (narrative task) and cognitive skills (working
memory)?
2.6.2 Methodology
The fourth study of this thesis is a correlational analysis between data on musical
aptitude and musical experience obtained from the children during the three preceding
experiments and their results at a phonological perception task, their imitation abilities in
French, calculated after the rating by French native speakers, and their ability to imitate
a series of words in different languages. The choice of productive and perceptive
variables is being motivated by Cohrdes, Grolig, and Schroeder (2016). In this
correlational study with 7 year-old children, the authors selected representative
language- and music-related competencies and found that language and music skills are
significantly interrelated.
2.6.3 Tools and resources
The data collected with the children during studies 1, 2, and 3 concern the following
specific abilities:
- Cognitive skills: working memory (see section 2.2.1 Memory span test),
- Language skills: narrative abilities (see section 2.2.2 Story retelling task),
- Speech skills: speech imitation talent (see section 2.2.3 Speech imitation task) and
phonological perception (see section 2.2.4 Perceptual discrimination task),
- Musical skills: musical expertise (see section 2.2.5), musical aptitude (see section
2.2.6.1 Evaluation of musical perception, and section 2.2.6.2 Evaluation of musical
production).
37
38
3. WORKING SCHEDULE
April - May 2017
Data collection for experiment 1 at school Masmitjà, Girona.
Submission of the article based on the Treball Final de Màster to the journal
Studies in Second Language Acquisition. Title: Observing and producing pitch
gestures facilitates the learning of mandarin Chinese tones and words.
Coauthors: Nerea Suárez González, Santiago González Fuente, Pilar Prieto.
Writing of the PhD research plan.
June 2017
Writing and submission of PhD research plan
Poster presentation at the conference Phonetics and Phonology in Europe
(PaPE), Köln Universität: Cologne (Germany), June 12-14. Title: Gestures
reproducing the F0 curve of lexical tones help learning Mandarin Chinese tones
and words. Coauthors: Nerea Suárez González, Santiago González Fuente, Pilar
Prieto.
Poster presentation at the conference Language as a form of Action, Institute of
Cognitive Sciences and Technologies (ISTC): Roma (Italy), June 21-23.
Title: Pitch gestures help learning Mandarin Chinese tones and words: a brief
training study on perception and production. Coauthors: Nerea Suárez González,
Santiago González Fuente, Pilar Prieto.
July 2017
Oral presentation of the PhD research plan: July 3rd Oral presentation at the Workshop sobre la Prosòdia del Català, University of
Barcelona. Preparation of the items for ratings and analysis of the results for Study 1
August 2017
Oral presentation at the European Language Association Conference (EUROSLA), Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism at the University of Reading: Reading (UK), August 30 - September 2.Title: Does a training with hand-clapping enhance the pronunciation of foreign words by second-graders?
September-October 2017
39
Methods design and testing design for Study 2
Contact with schools for studies 2 and 3
November- December 2017
Data collection for Study 2
January-March 2018
Data preparation and analysis for Study 2
Methods design and testing design for Study 3
April-June 2018
8 weeks’ training and data collection for Study 3
Possible attendance to Speech Prosody: Grenoble (France), May 15-18
Possible attendance to LabPhon16: Lisboa (Portugal), June 20-22
July 2018
Data preparation and analysis for Study 3
Writing of Study 3
September-October 2018
Proposal preparation of Study 4 in collaboration with Susanne Reiterer and Markus Christiner, from the Research center for Language Learning and Teaching at Vienna University, Austria
November-December 2018
Data preparation and analysis for Study 4
January- June 2019
Writing of the PHD thesis
July 2019
PHD defense
40
4. SELECTED REFERENCES
Christiner, M., & Reiterer, S. M. (2015). A Mozart is not a Pavarotti : singers outperform
instrumentalists on foreign accent imitation, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9,
1–8.
This experiment by Christiner and Reiterer (2015) follows up on previous findings that
there is a very clear connection between musicality in general and an ability to articulate
well (Reiterer et al., 2011) and that – together with auditory working memory – good
singing predicts good imitation skills in an unknown language (Christiner & Reiterer,
2013). Here, the authors test whether singing capacity and instrument playing contribute
to speech imitation to different extent. Ninety-seven participants (27 instrumentalists, 33
vocalists and 36 non-musicians/non-singers) were tested on their abilities to imitate
speech in an unknown language (Hindi) and in a second language (English), and on their
musical aptitude. Results show that vocalists and instrumentalists significantly
outperformed non-musicians/non-singers in imitating speech both unknown and foreign.
Moreover, vocalists significantly outperformed instrumentalists. The authors emphasize
the complementary role of the vocal motor system in the ability to learn new languages,
in addition to auditory processes.
This study is crucial for this thesis, as it supports the underlying effects of musical
expertise and aptitude on second language pronunciation. Most importantly, participants
are engaged in a productive task, which highlight a different aspect of the language-
music relationship compared to most investigations (neurobiological and behavioral),
which tend to examine speech perception.
Cason, N., Astésano, C., & Schön, D. (2015). Bridging music and speech rhythm:
Rhythmic priming and audio-motor training affect speech perception. Acta
Psychologica, 155, 43–50.
This experiment follows up on findings by Cason & Schön (2012), who found evidence
In an electrophysiological (EEG) experiment that musical rhythmic priming enhanced the
phonological processing of bi- or trisyllabic pseudo-words with a final stressed syllable
when the speech metrical structure matched the prime meter. Cason et al., (2015) aimed
to investigate if this effect could also be found with real sentences in French. Thirty-four
French adult participants heard a musical rhythmic prime followed by a sentence either
41
with a matching or mismatching prosodic structure and immediately performed a
phoneme detection task. To check for the possible effect of active production, half the
participants had received audio–motor training with the musical rhythms presented in the
experiment. Analysis of reaction times showed that phoneme detection was faster with
a matching metrical prime. In addition, authors compared results between the group that
benefited the audio-motor training with the prime against results of the group that only
heard them and found that the priming effect was enhanced in the first group.
This experiment is particularly important for the present thesis in two ways. First, it
underlines the link of musical training – the effect of the primes – to final sentence stress,
which is one of the objective of Study 1. Second, it demonstrate the enhancing role of
production over perception – the effect of training the primes actively, which goes in the
sense of an important effect of embodiment. Nevertheless, the terms of the audio-motor
training cannot be assessed as they are not described in the article.
Nemoto, S., Wilson, I., & Perkins, J. (2016). Analysis of the effects on pronunciation of
training by using song or native speech. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of
America, 140(4), 3343.
Nemoto, Wilson, and Perkins (2016) investigated whether English pronunciation by
Japanese speakers improved more after training with spoken or sung sentences. 30
participants trained their pronunciation individually during 10 minutes either by listening
to an English song and singing themselves or by listening to the lyrics of the song spoken
by a native speaker. Hundred-eight native speakers listened to the sentence produced
by the participants and rated isolated structures from the text on a scale from 1 to 4
against the following criteria: pronunciation, intonation and foreign accent. Results
showed that participants in the sung condition performed significantly worse at post-test
than participants in the spoken condition. The authors suggest that the fact that
participants in the experimental group only heard the song’s melody, and not the English
language melody, negatively influenced the production of the sentences’ prosody at
posttest. This could constitute a reasonable explanation, since the participants did not
hear the spoken sentence and therefore never had the opportunity to listen to the
prosody of the spoken target sentences. The negative results could also be due to the
rating system, through Amazon Mechanical Turk, or more probably the instructions given
to the raters, who could listened to the sentences only twice and had to rate various
42
isolated items from these sentences.
This experiment is closely related to Study 2, which will be an experiment with songs. It
will however differ in several aspects. First, the melodies will be well-known by the
participants. Second, they will hear the words both sung and spoken. Third, native
speakers will listen to the items in isolation for judgment, instead of full sentences, and
they will be able to rate in a more fine-grained scale from 1 to 7.
Toscano-Fuentes, M. C., & Fonseca Mora, M. C. (2012). La música como herramienta
facilitadora del aprendizaje del inglés como lengua extranjera. Teoría de La
Educación, 24 (2), 197–213.
Toscano-Fuentes and Fonseca (2012) implemented a classroom training with forty-nine
Spanish 6th-graders. They added musical activities to the classic ESL curriculum for the
academic year (9 months). Songs were used actively to teach listening comprehension,
vocabulary, grammar and focus on pronunciation whereas instrumental music was used
passively as ambient music. The authors claim that students with high auditory capacity
(measured by the Seashore test) had better results in English in general and in reading
and listening comprehension in particular. In this study, pronunciation abilities were
evaluated by teachers during regular speaking activities. Most importantly, the absence
of a control group does not allow us to assess if the improvements in the five skills under
scrutiny (speaking, reading, listening, writing and grammar) are due to a normal
development after nine month instruction or are increased thanks to the musical
activities, in other words, there isn’t any control group.
This longitudinal intervention study is very interesting for Study 3 of the present thesis,
as it is an implementation of musical activities in the English language classroom.
Reflecting on this experience, we aim at an intervention in the classroom that will be
more controlled, with a careful selection of the structure to be learned and very organized
lesson plans to avoid discrepancies between the control group and the experimental
groups. We will also focus on pronunciation and recall. Most importantly, children will
practice active rhythmic activities and songs.
Cohrdes, C., Grolig, L., & Schroeder, S. (2016). Relating language and music skills in
young children: A first approach to systemize and compare distinct competencies
on different levels. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1–11.
43
Cohrdes, Grolig, and Schroeder (2016) conducted a correlational study with forty-four 7
year-old children with a large number of representative language- and music-related
competencies from lower to higher levels. In this study, language and music skills are
hierarchized in 5 levels in a parallel manner a task is applied in each domain for each
level of competence.
- Level 1: small perceptual units such as vowels and phonemes (phonemic
discrimination, word discrimination) and sounds and short tonal phrases
(sound discrimination, tonal discrimination).
- Level 2: perception and production of syllables and words (phonological
awareness, prosodic repetition) and short rhythms and melodies
(rhythmic repetition, melodic repetition).
- Level 3: processing of syntactic (syntactic integration) or harmonic
sequences (harmonic progression).
- Level 4: recognition of emotions in spoken sentences (ERs) or tonal
phrases (ERt).
- Level 5: high-level units such as stories (narrative comprehension) or
songs (synchronization).
Results show that performance on lower levels was predictive for the performance on
higher levels within domains. Moreover, correlations between domains were stronger for
competencies reflecting a similar level of cognitive processing.
This article is extremely helpful for the design of our control tests and for Study 4, as it
gives an exhaustive description of the tests the authors used to obtain data for each of
the variables described above. For study one, we considered the phonemic
discrimination task and the rhythmic repetition task. For the remaining studies, we will
probably tap into melodic perception and production as well.
44
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5. APPENDIX
Appendix A – Language and musical experience questionnaire10
10 Additionally, in the PROMs test, participants are asked if there is someone playing music in their family, as amateur or professional musician.
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Appendix B – Lists of Catalan words for the memory span test
(3words) barba, suc, cosí
bolígraf, plàtan, porta
cadira, coll, paper
nuvi, pastís, ull
(4 words) casa, llengua, poma, telèfon
sabata, guitarra, sol, cuina
ungla, llapis, nebot, maduixa
abella, peu, pallasso, llibre
(5 words) clau, aigua, dent, nina, dutxa
lluna, bruixa, germà, cocodril, banyador
ratolí, guants, tren, vestit, mandarina
barret, grua, autobus, jardí, llum
(6 words) lloro, raqueta, cotxe, poma, sandalia, neu
tisores, dibuix, nit, groc, tovallola, cuina
aixeta, moneda, sabó, marieta, nas, llaminadura
got, sofà, crema, pantalons, ou, conill
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Appendix C – Narrative scoring
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Appendix D – Phonological discrimination test for French phonemes
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Appendix E – Words selected for the training, the pre-test and the post-test of
Study 1
Training disyllabic trisyllabic more than 3 syllables
balcon ambulance télévision
tambour crocodile ordinateur
musique biberon hélicoptère
purée céréales aspirateur
oreille confiture
pizza spaguettis
avion éléphant
famille mandarine
Total number 8 8 4 20
Pretest disyllabic trisyllabic more than 3 syllables
RELATED
tambour crocodile aspirateur
balcon mandarine
musique biberon
purée confiture
ambulance
UNRELATED
sportive imprimante calendrier
rateau guarderie
cheveu dinosaure
tortue
serpent
princesse
Total number 10 8 2 20
Post test disyllabic trisyllabic more than 3 syllables
RELATED
tambour crocodile aspirateur
balcon mandarine
musique biberon
purée confiture
ambulance
UNRELATED
cheveu guarderie calendrier
rateau imprimante
NEW
sorcière cheminée
statue
fourchette
ceinture
Total number 10 8 2 20
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Appendix F – Training procedure of the first session, Study 3
Language structures Écoute répète À toi Encore une fois! C’est très bien bravo!
Vocabulary (transparent words) tomate banane pizza sándwich moto taxi
musique guitare girafe princesse café coca
Grup 1: Game Group Grup 2: Integrated Rhythm Group
Grup 3. Consecutive Rhythm Group
Part 1 Listening to a poem (prerecorded) – 14 minutes
Part 1 Rhythmic activities - 20 minutes
Activity 1: During the listening, mimes are used by the instructor to help children get the meaning of the poem. Activity 2 : Children listen again and repeat the mimes together with the instructor
Activity 1: During the listening, mimes are used by the instructor to help children get the meaning of the poem. They can hear the tempo in the background while listening to the poem. Activity 2: Children listen again and spontaneously follow the rhythm of the poem. They can walk, run, jump, and swing, etc.
Activity 1: Children listen to and spontaneously follow different rhythms including the rhythm of the poem that will be introduced later. They can walk, run, jump, and swing, etc. Activity 2: Children listen again to the rhythm and use freely their hands and feet to follow the rhythm. They explore different ways of marking a rhythm.
Part 2: Games with flashcards – 26 minutes Part 2: Games with flashcards – 20
12 flashcards with drawings representing the transparent words are distributed to the children. Activity 1:
A/ Children listen to the poem once again and raise the card when they hear the corresponding word. B/ Children listen to the poem, stand up and form a line according to the sequence of the words in the poem. Then the instructor calls one of the items on the flashcard at a time and the child that has got the card must go back to her seat. Activity 2:
A/ Instructor picks up one flashcard and proposes a word. If it is not the corresponding word, children put their hand on their mouth to tell they do not agree. If it is the correct word, they repeat the word. B/Instructor asks children to remember and announce the words in the right order and hang them on the blackboard. They listen to the poem to
Activity 1:
A/ Children listen to the poem once again and raise the card when they hear the corresponding word. B/Instructor names and claps a series of words as in the poem (series of 4), and then asks children to move and invent rhythmic movement on their body with the instructor repeat the series and vary the tempo. Activity 2:
A/ Instructor picks up one flashcard and proposes a word. If it is not the corresponding word, children put their hand on their mouth to tell they do not agree. If it is the correct word, they repeat the word and clap. B/ Instructor asks children to remember and announce the words in the right order and hang them on the blackboard. They listen to the poem to check if they are
Activity 1: Listening to a poem
A/During the listening of the poem, mimes are used by the instructor to help children get the meaning of the poem. B/ Children listen again and repeat
the mimes together with the instructor Activity 2:
A/Children listen to the poem once again and raise the card when they hear the corresponding word
B/ Instructor picks up one flashcard and proposes a word. If it is not the corresponding word, children put their hand on their mouth to tell they do not agree. If it is the correct word, they repeat the word.
66
check if they are right and repeat after each series (series of 4)
right, they repeat and clap after a series is finish (series of 4)
