Previous studies have explored the benefits of shadowing in the EFL classroom and have shown that this technique, which consists in repeating what one hears simultaneously, helps improve pronunciation skills. However, very little is known about the potential beneficial effects of performing “embodied shadowing” while mirroring rhythmic beat gestures. This study adopts a between-subjects pre-/post-test design to determine if both observing and reproducing manual beat gestures during shadowing training leads to an improvement in pronunciation in terms of fluency, comprehensibility and accentedness when compared to an onlyshadowing condition. Crucially, the study controls for shadowing performance by participants. Fifty-four students underwent six shadowing training sessions over a two-week span, in which they were asked to shadow English video recorded readings of a comic narration in two conditions, the Gesture and the No-Gesture condition. Shadowing performance was assessed, and participants were divided into two groups, according to their level in shadowing performance. Pronunciation assessments of a reading task before and after training revealed statistically significant improvements in fluency, comprehensibility and accentedness only in good shadowers and across both Gesture and No-Gesture conditions. The results suggest that both embodied and nonembodied shadowing training have a positive effect for improving L2 pronunciation when participants perform shadowing in a simultaneous way.

Treball de fi de màster en Lingüística Teòrica i Aplicada. Tutora: Dra. Pilar Prieto Vives.