Language Instruction at USNA
Not only do the United States have troops stationed in more than 150 countries worldwide (https://dod.defense.gov), but they are also a predominant presence in international bodies such a NATO and the United Nations. That means that our military leaders need to be able to not only communicate with local populations but also with their foreign counterparts. It thus comes as no surprise that USNA’s own Maochun Yu, Timothy Disher, and Andrew Phillips in their 2010 article in AAC&U’s Liberal Education stated that “our military leaders need a strong foundation in and understanding of global cultures and foreign languages” (p. 2). These facts stress the importance of language instruction at military institutions in general, but also particularly highlight the significance of successful communication in a foreign language. My role in the Languages and Cultures Department at USNA is to facilitate language and culture learning through my teaching and research, by taking Midshipmen on cultural field trips, and to prepare them for study abroad in the target culture.
How my research relates to this goal:
A considerable amount of previous research has shown that pronunciation skills play a crucial role in effective communication (Celce-Murcia et al., 2010) and yet, pronunciation training is often neglected in foreign language classrooms. It is therefore a crucial undertaking to find ways to bring pronunciation training—and with it the chance of improving learners’ oral communication skills—to foreign language classrooms at USNA and other higher education institutions. My current research therefore explores whether peer corrective feedback, a new method of instruction that has proven successful in other language learning contexts (Lyster, Saito, & Sato, 2013; Sippel, 2017), is also beneficial in improving language learners’ pronunciation and thus communication skills. By doing so, it not only serves Midshipmen in language classes at the Naval Academy, but also the field of Second Language Acquisition in general, considering that researchers in this field have recently lamented the paucity of research on peer feedback in pronunciation instruction (Yonesaka, 2017). |
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