How Well do General-Skills ESL Textbooks Address Pronunciation?
Why this work is in the frame
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
Many instructors are reluctant to teach pronunciation in adult ESL classrooms, often because of lack of formal training. However, significant numbers of ESL students want pronunciation instruction. Although stand-alone pronunciation courses for second-language (L2) learners exist, many students cannot gain access to them. One approach to meeting the needs of both instructors and students is for general-skills L2 textbooks to include pronunciation activities. We examined 12 ESL general-skills textbook series (48 texts in total) and six accompanying teachers’ manuals to determine to what extent these popular books include pro- nunciation activities and how consistent the texts are across individual series. We also recorded which aspects of L2 pronunciation are the focus of the lessons. Task types were examined in a subset of five series. We found striking variability in the concentration of pronunciation activities both across and within series. Similarly, whereas some textbooks used several task types, others relied heavily on a limited range. Furthermore, some texts offered little in terms of explicit ex- planations. In some instances teachers’ manuals provided instructors with guid- ance; others included little more than repeated admonitions to remind the students to monitor their L2 pronunciation. The implications for teachers of general ESL courses are discussed.Plusieurs enseignants hésitent à enseigner la prononciation aux adultes dans les cours d’ALS, souvent parce qu’ils manquent de formation formelle. Toutefois, un nombre considérable d’apprenants en ALS voudraient qu’on enseigne la pronon- ciation. Même si les cours autonomes de prononciation pour les apprenants d’une langue seconde existent, plusieurs étudiants n’y ont pas accès. Une démarche qui répondrait tant aux besoins des enseignants que ceux des étudiants consisterait à intégrer des activités de prononciation dans les manuels L2 évoquant des com- pétences générales. Nous avons examiné 12 séries de manuels de compétences générales en ALS (48 volumes en tout) et six manuels pour enseignants dans le but de déterminer dans quelle mesure ces manuels bien répandus Incluent des activités de prononciation et pour évaluer la cohérence interne de chaque série. Nous avons également noté quels aspects de la prononciation en langue seconde on évoquait dans les leçons. Dans un sous-ensemble de cinq séries, nous avons porté notre attention sur les types de tâches présentées. Nous avons trouvé une variabilité frappante dans les activités de prononciation, tant au sein d’une même série que d’une série à l’autre. De même, alors que certains manuels présentent plusieurs types de tâches, d’autres en offrent qu’une gamme limitée. De plus, cer- tains manuels incluent peu d’explications explicites. Dans certains cas, les manuels pour enseignants offraient un certain encadrement; d’autres se con- tentaient d’adresser des admonitions aux enseignants pour qu’ils rappellent aux étudiants de surveiller leur prononciation en langue seconde. Nous discutons des retombées pour les enseignants de cours généraux d’ALS.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.105 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it