The effects of explicit instruction of contractions as a connected speech feature on Turkish EFL learners' read speech

Some approaches, such as Communicative Language Teaching, emphasize the importance of intelligibility and comprehensibility in speaking and listening. This focus on suprasegmental features has been growing since the late 1980s. Pronunciation teaching has thrived as a result. Teaching suprasegmental features, including stress, rhythm, connected speech, and intonation, is crucial for effective communication. Connected speech (CS) is important for understanding spoken language. Recent research has focused on connected speech and its positive impact on listening, speaking, and language learning in general. Contractions play a significant role in connected speech. Therefore, this study specifically focuses on the often-overlooked topic of contractions, which can be considered a subcategory of CS. An experimental and a control group from a state university in Türkiye participated voluntarily in the quasi-experimental study, and the experimental group was provided with some special training designed by the researcher, while the control group followed only the curriculum of their institution. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected through read speech audio recordings, researcher and participant journals, and semi-structured interviews. It was concluded that it is possible to improve Turkish EFL learners' read-speech performance significantly through explicit instruction of contractions as a connected speech feature. It is expected to fill a gap in the connected speech and suprasegmental features literature in the context of Türkiye specifically. As the study is closely linked with the teaching of English, it can be advocated that it has implications for the integration of teaching contractions and connected speech into speaking, listening, reading and writing classes, and it is the other aspect of the present study, i.e., the results and suggestions are expected to be a great contribution to the educational and research sphere. Key Words: Connected speech, contractions, pronunciation teaching, read speech, suprasegmental features