'I Found the Fish in Pronunciation Quiz #3!' Examining the Effect of a Game-Informed Site on Young Learners' L2 Pronunciation

This paper examines the impact that a game-informed pronunciation site has on the acquisition of English /r/-/l/. Twenty-three Japanese-speaking English learners completed a series of pronunciation activities directed at improving their phonological awareness and oral production of the /r/-/l/ contrast. The activities included game-informed tasks that rewarded learners with points, badges, and scavenger hunt items. For control, eight students completed the same activities without game-informed affordances. The study followed a mixed-methods approach with a pre-, post-, and delayed post-test design. Qualitative results indicate that learners in the game-informed group developed metaphonological awareness and perceived the proposed learning environment positively. For production, the quantitative results indicate that participants in the game-informed group improved their pronunciation of /r/-/l/ items. Pedagogical implications for the use of game-informed environments for L2 pronunciation instruction are discussed. [For the complete volume, "Intelligent CALL, Granular Systems and Learner Data: Short Papers from EUROCALL 2022 (30th, Reykjavik, Iceland, August 17-19, 2022)," see ED624779.]