Abstract

A troublesome pronunciation issue for Spanish EFL learners is the past -ed ending of regular verbs. Neuro linguistic Programming (NLP) is a perspective integrating neurology, language and programming which are key for processing information and for responding to learners’ styles with the potential to help EFL teachers address this pronunciation issue. This paper reports a study conducted in two subsequent terms with 43 students at a university language institute: two groups taught using standard pronunciation techniques and two using NLP techniques preceded by oral tasks in which they were encouraged to pronounce regular verbs in the past. Data collected included students self-recorded pronunciation tasks, a survey to elicit students’ motivation and satisfaction and a teacher’s log with insights about students’ attitude and response to the strategy. Analysis of the data showed that after the first implementation, the NLP group improved their pronunciation a 30%, the standard one improved a 10%. During the second implementation, the NLP group showed an improvement of 23.7% pronunciation accuracy in task 1 and a 24.6% in task two compared to the standard group. The findings suggest that teacher’s use of NLP techniques into their classroom instruction have a positive impact on students’ pronunciation of the past ending of regular verbs.

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