Studying the effectiveness of shadow-reading with and without written script onpronunciation of Iranian intermediate EFL students

Pronunciation is essential to appropriate communication because the incorrect use ofpronunciation inevitably leads to the message being misunderstood by the receptor. Inspite of its importance, L2 learners often regard pronunciation as the most difficultlanguage skill to learn. In this study, shadowing as an act or task in pronunciation, inwhich the learner tracks the target speech and repeats it immediately as exactly aspossible, is recommended to enhance the students’ pronunciation. More specifically,this study aimed at investigating the effect of shadowing with and without written scripton the Iranian EFL students’ pronunciation. 77 participants out of a population of 99students were randomly picked through the administration of Preliminary English Test(PET). The participants were three groups of intermediate level. The First group,containing 27 students, did shadow-reading with written script (group A); the secondgroup comprising 25 students, who did shadow-reading without written script (groupB); and the third, consisting of 25 learners, who acted as the control group. Eachshadowing lesson was conducted with the detailed instructions as recommended byKadota and Tamai (2004). The data were collected through the administration of a pretest and a post-test. The analysis of the test scores, using a one-way ANOVA, revealedthat the experimental groups (A & B) performed statistically better in pronunciation. Italso revealed that the shadowing with written script group performed statistically betterthan the without written script group. The implications of this study are that shadowing,as a fruitful technique, can be incorporated into the teaching of the pronunciation to theEFL students

Keywords:

Shadow-Reading , Pronunciation , Written Script , Non-Written script , Intermediate EFL Students