Xiaotong Xi

Journal articles

Hand gestures that mimic the mouth shape, as opposed to the tongue position, can help the L2 sound production.

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Xi, X., Li, P., & Prieto, P. (accepted). Improving L2 vowel production with hand gestures encoding visible articulation: Evidence from picture-naming and paragraph-reading tasks. Language Learning.

Using hands to touch the tip of the tongue can help the production of L2 English /θ/ and /ð/.

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Ozakin, A. S., Xi, X., Li, P., & Prieto, P. (2023). Thanks or tanks: training with tactile cues improves learners' accuracy of English interdental consonants in an oral reading task. Language Learning and Development, 19(4), 404–419.
https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2022.2107522

Learners who are able to accurately produce hand gestures can improve more on L2 stop production.

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Li, P., Xi, X., Baills, F., & Prieto, P. (2021). Training non-native aspirated plosives with hand gestures: learners' gesture performance matters. Language Cognition and Neuroscience, 36(10), 1313–1328.
https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2021.1937663

Observing hand gestures that are congruent to the phonetic features of target L2 sounds can help learning.

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Xi, X., Li, P., Baills, F., & Prieto, P. (2020). Hand gestures facilitate the acquisition of novel phonemic contrasts when they appropriately mimic target phonetic features. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 63(11), 3571–3585.
https://doi.org/10.1044/2020_JSLHR-20-00084

Conference proceedings

Xi, X., Li, P., & Prieto, P. (2023). Reducing acoustic overlap of L2 English vowels through gestures encoding lip aperture. In A. Henderson & A. Kirkova-Naskova (Eds.), Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on English Pronunciation: Issues and Practices (pp. 261–270). Université Grenoble-Alpes. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8225191
Xi, X., Li, P., & Prieto, P. (2023). Does visuospatial working memory predict L2 perceptual learning from phonetic training with hand gestures? In R. Skarnitzl & J. Volín (Eds.), Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (pp. 2670–2674). Guarant International.
Xi, X. & Li, P. (2023). Effects of stress and prominence on Spanish stops and lenition in L2 speech of proficient Mandarin learners of Spanish. In R. Skarnitzl & J. Volín (Eds.), Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (pp. 2740–2744). Guarant International.
Li, P. & Xi, X. (2023). Nuclear contours of Spanish echo questions produced by proficient Chinese learners of Spanish: A dynamic analysis. In R. Skarnitzl & J. Volín (Eds.), Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (pp. 2491–2495). Guarant International.
Xi, X. & Li, P. (2022). Spanish Stops And Their Allophones Produced By Proficient Mandarin Learners Of Spanish. Proceedings of the 2022 25th Conference of the Oriental COCOSDA International Committee for the Co-ordination and Standardisation of Speech Databases and Assessment Techniques (O-COCOSDA 2022). https://doi.org/10.1109/O-COCOSDA202257103.2022.9997932
Li, P. & Xi, X. (2022). Spanish lexical stress produced by proficient Mandarin learners of Spanish. Proceedings of ISAPh 2022, 4th International Symposium on Applied Phonetics. https://doi.org/10.21437/ISAPh.2022-8

Book chapters

Li, P., Baills, F., Xi, X., & Prieto, P. (2024). Gesture shape and gesture-speech alignment are important during embodied L2 pronunciation training. In A. Brown, & S. W. Eskildsen (Eds.) Multimodality and Multilingual Interaction Across Epistemologies. Routledge.