SISTEMA DE VENTILACIÓN

The three handouts that were given to learners during the first sentence- completion activity, the interview task, and the second sentence-completion activity contained the carrier sentences and questions that were embedded with the target words. Carrier sentences are used commonly to elicit speech data in phonology and phonetics studies (e.g., Colantoni, Marasco, Steele, & Sunara, 2014; McAllister, Flege, & Piske, 2002) as well as recent interactionist studies that focused on development of L2 phonology (e.g., Saito & Lyster, 2012a, 2012b). They can be particularly useful as they allow researchers to ensure that the target features they are interested in studying are elicited consistently. Also, through the use of carrier

sentences, researchers are able to control the phonological environment, such as preceding and following vowels/consonants, as well as the non-phonological

environment, such as morphological, lexical, and syntactic elements surrounding the target language feature (Colantoni et al, 2015). In their review of methodological issues in studies focusing on word stress, Roettger and Gordon (2017) highlight the importance of controlling for context by avoiding target words produced in isolation and placing them at a point in the carrier sentence away from phrasal boundaries, as words placed at phrasal boundaries can lead to a confounding effect with boundary- associated tonal effects. They also argue that isolated words can make it difficult to separate word stress from phrase-level prominence, which was referred to as pitch- accent earlier in Chapter 4.2. Considering these recommendations, the target words were embedded in sentence-medial position for each carrier sentence. Another

motivation to use carrier sentences was to ensure consistency of eliciting the same target features from each participant. How a teacher or a researcher envisions task-as- workplan, defined as expectations from the task, can be different from task-in-process, defined as what actually happens during the execution of the task, as learners may have their own way of interpreting and carrying out the task (Breen, 1987, 1989; Samuda & Bygate, 2008; Seedhouse, 2005). Considering this possibility, the carrier sentences were also instrumental in minimizing the differences between task-as- workplan and task-in-process, which ensured consistently in data collection.

A potential disadvantage of using read materials compared to spoken language could be that participants behavior during controlled speech may not be the same as their behavior during naturally produced speech. As a result, one may argue that research on pronunciation would yield better results, or findings would be more meaningful when speech samples are naturally produced. It is hard to deny the ecological validity of spontaneous and naturally produced language. However, spontaneous speech also has an important limitation from the research perspective, which is the lack of control over target language features. In many cases, lack of control makes it difficult to collect enough data on a specific language feature and run statistical analyses. Furthermore, in an article that addresses criticism directed toward lab speech, Xu (2010) debunks several misconceptions about lab speech that consider it slow, unnatural, monotonous, and lacking communicative functions. Xu explains why these misconceptions are unfounded and explains that lab speech allows researchers to use theory-based approaches and increases generalizability of the results as it minimizes the number of uncontrolled factors. In short, read materials in the form of carrier sentences are still a useful method for collecting speech data, especially when subjects have the level of literacy that would allow them to read in

the target language, which was the case for the current study. It is also important to highlight that the carrier sentences in the current study were used as part of

communicative tasks that resulted in highly interactive speech data, which is different from lab studies in which participants are given a particular carrier phrase and are asked to read it multiple times by substituting the target word for each iteration (e.g., Say X quickly).

The choice of target words embedded into the carrier sentences was partially informed by the findings from the pilot study. The learners who participated in the pilot study (Parlak & Ziegler, 2017) exhibited more acoustic gains for their placement of primary stress in the case of three-syllable words compared to four-syllable words. This was perhaps an issue related to developmental readiness (Han, 2002; Mackey & Philp, 1998) in combination with the requirements of the tasks. Because the learners in the current study were sampled from the same population, it was decided that focusing only on three-syllable words would be more level-appropriate. As a result, the current study focused on 20 three-syllable words with primary stress on the second syllable as the target vocabulary. There were two additional considerations that

influenced the selection of target words, namely orthographic transparency and syllable structure. Orthographic transparency was taken into consideration as learners were required to read aloud carrier sentences with the target words embedded in them. In general, the English writing system has low orthographic transparency because there is no one-to-one mapping between the phonemes and the orthographic forms. This could potentially create a challenge for L2 speakers as previous research has shown that orthographic input may create non-target-like phonological representations in learners’ mental lexicon (Basetti, 2006). It may also lead to non-target-like

(Basetti & Atkinson, 2015), or pronunciation of silent letters (Aro & Wimmer, 2003; Browning, 2004). In order to mitigate the possible negative effects of orthography on learners’ pronunciation, the target words selected for the current study did not have any irregularities or silent letters. Moreover, the syllable structure of each word was closely tied to its orthographic form. When L2 learners have difficulty pronouncing consonant clusters, they may employ epenthesis in order to maintain the consonants presented in orthographic form (Young-Scholten, 1998). Therefore, complex syllable structures, in particular long consonant clusters, were avoided. Altogether, there were seven patterns of syllable structures: CV-CV-CVCC (N = 1), CV-CVC-VC (N= 6), CVC-CV-CVC (N = 1), CVC-CVC-VC (N = 3), CVC-CCV-CVC (N = 1), CVC- CVC-CVC (N = 6), and CVC-CVC-CVCC (N = 2).

The twenty words were divided into two sets with ten words in each set. The words from Set 1 were embedded into the handouts that were given to Student A and words from Set 2 were embedded into the handouts that were given to Student B1_{. The} two sets were created in order to counterbalance the target words and to avoid

production of the same target word by both participants, which could have led to a priming effect. The complete list of target words can be seen in Table 6.3.

Table 6.3 Target words

Set 1 dynamic develop revision consider suspicion

confusion perception responsive contention consistent

Set 2 position duration diminish formation condition

compassion companion consensus convention persistent