Soundcloud app and pronunciation

Abstract

This research aims to investigate the impact of SoundCloud application in the students’ pronunciation of fourth level from PINE program (Pedagogía de los Idiomas Nacionales y Extranjeros) at Universidad Técnica de Ambato. The study was carried out with a quasi-experimental research, and it included 23 students. They were divided into two groups, the control group and the experimental group. The control group did not have any treatment, while the experimental group worked with the SoundCloud application. During this process the students had to listen to the recordings given by the teacher which included the [t], [d], and the [ɪd] sounds at the end of the regular verbs in the simple past tense. The research took five meetings by the Zoom platform, two of them were just to apply the pre-test and the post-test and the other three meetings were especially for checking the three sounds in simple past-tense. At the end of each session they had to upload individual podcasts to the SoundCloud application to receive feedback from their classmates. The data was collected through a pre-test (at the beginning of the intervention) and post-test (at the end of the intervention), and to evaluate both tests it was necessary the use of a checklist. Finally, the researcher used the software SPSS and the statistical T-student to obtain the results of the intervention. The final results showed that the SoundCloud application had a positive impact in the students’ pronunciation because it motivated students to improve their pronunciation