In a faculty-led assessment carried out in a Spanish phonetics course, students demonstrated fossilized English transfer features interfering with their production and perception of native-like Spanish. In response, a team of linguistics and Spanish-language faculty have involved upper-division Spanish and Linguistics students in the development and delivery of pedagogical materials that give intermediate-level students explicit Spanish pronunciation instruction at the 200-level.
In this presentation, we offer an introduction to this phonetics curriculum and report our findings with regard to changes in student productions, measured using recordings from the start and close of the academic term. After completing the vowels curriculum, student recordings showed reduction of English transfer features, and students reported greater confidence in understanding native-like Spanish speech and an improved ability to assess and practice their own productions.