Can TTS help L2 learners develop their phonological awareness?

Abstract

Text-To-Speech synthesizers (TTS) have raised the interest of researchers and teachers for their ability to enhance foreign/second language (L2) learning, particularly with regards to the development of pronunciation skills (Liakin, Cardoso, & Liakina, 2017). Despite some optimistic results, there are no studies that investigate TTS’s pedagogical potential to enhance L2 Phonological Awareness (PA), especially in foreign language contexts, where access to rich aural input is limited in terms of both quantity and quality. The present study examines TTS’s pedagogical potential as a tool to assist English L2 learners develop their PA, focusing on the morphophonological alternations that characterize regular past tense marking in English (past -ed). Results show that TTS contributed positively for the auditory perception and controlled (but not spontaneous) production of the targeted phenomenon.