V(is)owel: An Interactive Vowel Chart to Understand What Makes Visual Pronunciation Effective in Second Language Learning

TL;DR

V(is)owel is an interactive vowel chart that enhances second language pronunciation learning by providing visual feedback that maps tongue movements, motivating learners and improving pronunciation more effectively than audio-only methods.

Contribution

This paper introduces V(is)owel, a novel interactive vowel chart that explicitly maps physical tongue movements to visual feedback, improving pronunciation learning in second language acquisition.

Findings

Visual feedback motivates learners to practice more.

V(is)owel improves pronunciation accuracy over audio-only methods.

Explicit anatomical feedback benefits phonetically untrained learners.

Abstract

Visual feedback speeds up learners' improvement of pronunciation in a second language. The visual combined with audio allows speakers to see sounds and differences in pronunciation that they are unable to hear. Prior studies have tested different visual methods for improving pronunciation, however, we do not have conclusive understanding of what aspects of the visualizations contributed to improvements. Based on previous work, we created V(is)owel, an interactive vowel chart. Vowel charts provide actionable feedback by directly mapping physical tongue movement onto a chart. We compared V(is)owel with an auditory-only method to explore how learners parse visual and auditory feedback to understand how and why visual feedback is effective for pronunciation improvement. The findings suggest that designers should include explicit anatomical feedback that directly maps onto physical movement for phonetically untrained learners. Furthermore, visual feedback has the potential to motivate more practice since all eight of the participants cited using the visuals as a goal with V(is)owel versus relying on their own judgment with audio alone. Their statements are backed up by all participants practicing words with V(is)owel more than with audio-only. Our results indicate that V(is)owel is effective at providing actionable feedback, demonstrating the potential of visual feedback methods in second language learning.