This study investigates the extent to which students could enhance their phonological awareness using student-created Anime. Students created Manga using an online comic creator. Manga incorporates formal English for narration and colloquial expressions in speech bubbles, enabling students to practice using different registers. As conversations in speech bubbles are visible, they may assist students in seeing how sounds change in different speech styles. Students created audio recordings of the dialogs, enabling them to adopt the speaking style of the characters and use appropriate expressions and phonological modifications for a given context. Students transformed the Manga into Anime by incorporating the Manga and sound files in a PowerPoint slideshow.
Forty-seven university students created health-information Manga. They made Manga using colloquial expressions found in Manga books and on the Internet. These expressions were shared with others by co-editing an online dictionary. After brief instructions on English phonology, students were encouraged to speak differently when role-playing characters and reading narrative texts in making Anime. A phonologist analyzed deletion, assimilation, and intonation in the pretest and the final assignment. The students had clearer intonation when they played Anime characters, but they avoided some native-like pronunciation in virtual conversations.