The Role of a Pronunciation LMOOC in Higher Education Studies

Abstract

This paper examines the creation and running of the Language MOOC (LMOOC) “The Acquisition of English Pronunciation through Songs and Literary Texts” (1st ed.) and its effects on the proficiency rates of English pronunciation of a group of Spanish speakers registered in the Degree in English Studies offered at the Distance Learning University in Spain (UNED). The LMOOC included a new approach to phonetics teaching and learning based on the stress and rhythmic patterns of literary and music forms. It was offered as voluntary, complementary material to the 640 students registered on the second-year compulsory course on English Pronunciation. The results of a final oral exam showed that the students who took the LMOOC did much better in their oral production than those who only worked with the regular course materials. The LMOOC allowed us to investigate a reversed methodology to phonetics teaching, from rhythmic patterns to sounds, which proved to be highly beneficial to the students of higher education programs with a relevant impact on their pronunciation competences and skills. These findings also suggested that using an implicit methodology to phonetics teaching based on poems and songs is a good complement to explicit learning.