Investigating the Impact of Visual Feedback on Voice Onset Time (VOT) among Iranian EFL Learners

This study delved into the effectiveness of Visual Feedback (VF) as a tool for enhancing the Voice Onset Time (VOT) of Iranian learners of English. In the realm of pronunciation instruction, VF is gaining recognition as a novel approach. The present research study involved an experimental group, and statistical analysis, along with visual data inspection, revealed consistent performance across the study's three phases. Surprisingly, the VF paradigm did not lead to significant changes in VOT. However, there were noticeable variations among participants regarding their average VOTs, with some showing improvement in English VOTs for the phonemes /p/, /t/, and /k/, while others did not. In the pretest, most participants exhibited English-like VOTs, suggesting a potential ceiling effect. Factors such as immersion in the target language and the prominence of English likely influenced participants' VOT scores before the study. The findings of this study indicate that visual feedback can serve as a different instructional approach for teaching pronunciation in the classroom. This approach is more student-centered, as it enables students to analyse visual representations of their own speech. The participants' VOT ratings may have been influenced by the frequency at which they were exposed to the target language prior to the study. Nevertheless, in order to obtain more reliable conclusions, it is important to carry out studies including a larger number of subjects with varying levels of exposure.