TITLE:
Learning English in China: A Tablet-Based App Using the Voices of Native Speakers
AUTHORS:
Dhonam Pemba, Virginia Mann, Trina Sarkar, Kaveh Azartash
KEYWORDS:
English Language Learning, Computer-Based Training, Primary Education
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.4 No.7,
July
30,
2016
ABSTRACT:
This paper concerns
the acquisition of English by two groups of five-to-six year old children
living in China: 1) Those taught by the traditional classroom methods using
non-native speakers of English as teachers and 2) Those taught by a new
computer application designed by Kadho, Inc. to train children in the
perception of English consonants vowels and suffixes produced by native
speakers of English. The data consist of judgments of children’s accent in
mimicking English sentences, at the onset, 1, 3, 6 and 10 months into
treatment. Children who received the computer app were judged to have
significantly better accents from the first month of training onwards.