News — Is it better to talk more measuredly to people learning a new tongue, or to chat with them at a faster pace that mimics everyday conversation? That question has sparked fevered debate among language educators for years. According to Yukari Hirata, associate professor of Japanese at Colgate University, the best strategy is to do both: Students improve the most when their teachers use techniques that combine both slow and fast rates of speaking.
Hirata and two Colgate undergraduate researchers co-authored a study on the topic that was published in the June 2007 issue of The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. Their research — which was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation — provides some insight into teaching a foreign language to non-native speakers.
Volunteers in the study — all adults aged 18 to 23 — were trained to recognize Japanese sounds that are difficult to hear and distinguish. One set of subjects used a method where Japanese sentences were delivered at a slow rate, a second group heard the same sentences spoken more quickly, and a third listened to the sentences uttered at both slow and fast rates. The volunteers were tested before and after they participated in the training.
The results revealed that participants in the third group learned more than their colleagues, said Hirata. What's more, training only with the fast rate was found to be least effective, she added.
"In the very early stages of learning a language, speaking slowly to students does seem to be beneficial to them," she explained. "But that's not enough — they need to be talked to at a variety of rates." She said she hoped her team's work would be used by educators and developers of language software alike. "Knowing what works the best will help both teachers and learners."
Founded in 1819, Colgate University is a highly selective, residential, liberal arts college serving nearly 2,750 undergraduates. Situated on a rolling 515-acre campus in central New York State, Colgate University attracts motivated students with diverse backgrounds, interests and talents.
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