Vicky Papachristou

Education

Supervisor: Dr Katerina Nikolaidis
Members of the Counseling committee: Dr Marina Matthaioudakis, Dr Christos Nakas.

In my PhD research I study the acquisition of English vowels by Greek learners of English via the use of two different methods of pronunciation teaching within an EFL context. In particular, I test the efficacy of explicit and/or implicit pronunciation teaching on the acquisition of English vowels. Greek monolingual learners of English of two different age groups (12 years old /sixth grade of elementary school and 16 years old /first grade of senior high school) are examined so as to determine whether there is an optimal age for the acquisition of FL pronunciation. Students’ progress is measured at two stages - before and after pronunciation tuition – in order to assess the effectiveness of pronunciation teaching. Students are recorded (twice) reading a list of sentences containing words with the English vowels. All vowels are analysed acoustically (using the PRAAT programme) measuring their F1 and F2 formant frequencies as well as their duration.

September 2004 – September 2005:
Master of Arts in Phonetics
Department of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London (UCL).
MA Dissertation: ‘Investigation of Triphthongs in Modern Received Pronunciation’, University College London.
Supervisor: Michael Ashby

2000-2004:
University of Thessaloniki, BA English Language and Literature
Undergraduate Dissertation: ‘The Teaching of Pronunciation (vowels) to speakers with hearing impairment through the Task-Based Language Teaching’
Supervisor: Dr Katerina Nikolaidis

Work experience

• July 2008 – September 2008: DEI, Bachelor and Master Degrees, Teacher of English
• September 2005 – May 2008: Teacher of English at private schools of foreign languages
  
  Research assistant in data collection for the “Paidologos Project”. This is an NIH (National Institute of Health) for the Cross-linguistic Phonological Acquisition.
• April 2004: 15^th High School, Thessaloniki, Teacher of English at secondary education (Teaching practice in the context of the class “Special Electives: ELT Practice in the Secondary Education.”)
• January 2003 – June 2004: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Teacher of English (Voluntary Teaching of English to hearing – impaired (level: beginners))

• English (C2 level)
• Italian (B2 level)
  

• ‘Explicit vs. Implicit Pronunciation Teaching to Greek children: the case of  the acquisition of English vowels’, 3-5 / 4 / 2009, 19th International Symposium on Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, Thessaloniki, Greece
• ‘An acoustic study of vowel production by Greek learners of English’,  6-8/6 2007, Research Days, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece