Mobile-Assisted Pronunciation Training With Adult Esol Learners: Background, Acceptance, Effort, and Accuracy

Abstract

This study investigates the relationships of learner background variables of adult English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) learners and a mobile App designed to promote pronunciation skills targeting features known to contribute to intelligibility. Recruited from free evening classes for English learners, 34 adult ESOL learners of mixed ESOL learning experiences, ages, lengths of residency, and first languages (L1s) completed six phoneme pair lessons on a mobile App along with a background questionnaire and technology acceptance survey (Venkatesh et al ., 2012). A series of Linear Mixed-Effect Model (LMEM) analyses were performed on learner background variables, technology acceptance, learner effort, and accuracy. The results found a minimal relationship between age, technology acceptance, and effort (7.68%) but a moderate to large relationship between age, technology acceptance and accuracy of consonants (39.70%) and vowels (64.26%). The implications are that learner use of mobile devices for L2 pronunciation training is moderated by various learner-related factors and the findings offer supportive evidence for designing mobile-based applications for a wide variety of backgrounds.