Suprasegmental Instruction and the Improvement of EFL Learners’ Listening Comprehension

Despite increasing attention to the goal of successful communication in foreign language instruction, L2 pronunciation, particularly the production of suprasegmental information, has been neglected in instructional settings at the college level. Yet accurate suprasegmental production is essential to the development of intelligible L2 speech. And while there is a scholarly consensus that accurate suprasegmental production of English is closely related with accurate perception of English (i.e., listening), little is known about the relationship between suprasegmental production and the development of EFL learners’ listening skills. This study, therefore, investigates the relationship between suprasegmental production instruction and improvement in Korean EFL learners’ listening comprehension scores, and, further, examines the relationship between accurate production of suprasegmentals and learners’ production of comprehensible L2 speech. Thirty-two EFL learners participated in a quasi-experimental study in which they received training in English suprasegmental features over one month. They also completed listening comprehension pre and post tests, a suprasegmental production test, and a timed picture description task. The results showed significant relations between accurate suprasegmental production and improvement in listening comprehension, and also accurate suprasegmental production is a good predictor of speaking performance. The main pedagogical implication of these findings is that it is important to emphasize suprasegmental in listening and speaking classes.