Pronunciation Teaching

La Fonética contrastiva, como parte de la Lingüística contrastiva, tiene por objetivo la comparación de los sistemas de la lengua materna del alumno (L1) y de la lengua meta (L2/LE), en este caso, en el ámbito fonético y fonológico. Dicha comparación permite anticiparse a los errores que mas probablemente cometerá el alumno, y lo que es más importante: conocer sus causas e idear soluciones eficaces.
Este trabajo presenta una serie de aportaciones de la Fonética contrastiva y enumera algunos de los aspectos que deben ser abordados a la hora de realizar un análisis contrastivo, tanto en el ámbito de lo segmental como de lo suprasegmental. Tras dicha exposición, se plantean algunas lineas de actuación recomendadas para sacar el mayor provecho posible de esas contribuciones potenciales.

It has long been thought that teachers of English should strive to acquire a native-like accent in order to be a good pronunciation model for their students. The so-called 'nativeness principle' (Levis 2005), i.e. the idea that a native-like accent is an achievable and desirable goal for an L2 learner, is still influencing pronunciation teaching practices in non-native language teacher education. However, this principle has been seriously challenged by applied linguists and especially by English as a lingua franca (ELF) researchers, who question the relevance of native speaker pronunciation norms for teachers and learners and call for a focus on international intelligibility in pronunciation teaching. This paper takes a critical look at the nativeness principle, arguing that it cannot be regarded as a satisfactory approach to pronunciation teaching in general and in teacher education in particular. I therefore present an alternative, ELF-informed approach to English pronunciation teaching and provide suggestions for its implementation in a specific teacher education context.

Both native and nonnative language teachers often find pronunciation a difficult skill to teach because of inadequate training or uncertainty about the effectiveness of instruction. But nonnative language teachers may also see themselves as inadequate models for pronunciation, leading to increased uncertainty about whether they should teach pronunciation (Golombek & Jordan, 2005). Although studies have regularly shown that instruction is effective in promoting pronunciation improvement (Saito, 2012), it is not known if improvement depends on the native language of the instructor, nor if learners improve differently depending on whether their teacher is native or nonnative. This study investigated the effect of teachers' first language on ratings of change in accentedness and comprehensibility. Learners in intact English classes were taught one class by a nonnative- and one by a native-English-speaking teacher. Each teacher taught the same pronunciation lessons over the course of 7 weeks. Results show that native listeners' ratings of the students' comprehensibility were similar for both teachers, despite many learners' stated preference for native teachers. The results offer encouragement to nonnative teachers in teaching pronunciation, suggesting that, like other language skills, instruction on pronunciation skills is more dependent on knowledgeable teaching practices than on native pronunciation of the teacher.

During the early semesters of the English B.A. programme at the University of Veracruz (UV) Language Department, students learning English as a Second Language have to concentrate on becoming familiar with all aspects of the language: new grammar structures, syntax and vocabulary, and phonology, or principles and rules that describe the sound system of the language. Many features of English pronunciation are difficult for Spanish-speaking students, and this may slow down their acquisition of the language because others may not understand them, even if they are using the right grammar. It is not about pronunciation that results in a foreign accent, because that is very normal in adult learners. Rather, it is about pronunciation problems that interfere with communication and, therefore, make interaction difficult. For this reason, it is very important to include the teaching of pronunciation early on when studying English. This research is focused on how much students develop pronunciation skills in a few classrooms, and to the students’ experiences in understanding and learning pronunciation skills and also to the instructor’s intervention in the task. There is also a comparison on how pronunciation is taught, based on the current methods encountered at the time of the research.

El presente trabajo de fin de máster tiene como objetivo identificar cuáles son los principales obstáculos en la pronunciación española a los que se enfrentan los estudiantes japoneses cuya segunda lengua extranjera es el inglés y establecer una metodología adaptada a ellos que pueda resolver esas dificultades. Para ello, el trabajo se ha dividido en dos secciones: el marco teórico y el estudio de caso. En la primera sección se han realizado una descripción y un análisis contrastivo de los sistemas fonológicos del japonés, el inglés americano y el español. Además, a través de una serie de lecturas se ha recogido información acerca de los principales errores fonológicos que otros profesores de español han encontrado en sus alumnos japoneses. Después de la parte teórica, se ha llevado a cabo la parte empírica en la que participó un exalumno de la Universidad de Rikkyo y que se dividió en tres fases: a) se examinaron las principales dificultades del participante después, b) se intentó corregir algunos de esos problemas mediante una metodología adaptada al alumno y c) se analizaron los resultados finales comparándolos con los de la primera fase. Finalmente, se exponen las conclusiones que se han extraído tras la realización del estudio.
[ENG]
The purpose of the present Master’s Dissertation is to identify which are the main obstacles in the Spanish pronunciation Japanese students whose second foreign language is English confront and to stablish a methodology adapted to them which can solve those difficulties. To achieve that, the project has been divided into two sections: the theoretical framework and the case study. In the first section we have carried out a description and a contrastive analysis of the Japanese, the English and the Spanish phonological systems. In addition, through a series of readings we have collected information about the main phonological mistakes Spanish teachers have found in their Japanese students. After the theoretical part, we conducted the empirical part in which a Rikkyo University alumni participated and which was divided into three phases: a) we examined the main difficulties of our participant b) we tried correcting some of those problems through a methodology adapted to him and b) we analysed the final results comparing them to those obtained during the first phase. Finally, we present the conclusions we deduced after the realization of the study.

This paper reports on the application of different techniques to the teaching of articulatory setting. The results of the effect of an articulatory setting training programme on the overall degree of native-like and foreign accent as well as the degree of good pronunciation of seven Spanish first-year university students of English as perceived by native speakers of English are presented and discussed.

This article investigates the lack of concrete targets for English pronunciation in Dutch secondary education and the concurrent lack of English pronunciation lessons. The article aims to answer two questions. Firstly, is mispronunciation really something of no concern? And secondly, how can the existing void best be filled? The article is organized as follows. Section 1 reports on findings from previous research into the effects of inadequate pronunciation on the listener. In Section 2 we outline the criteria that the Dutch government has set for the English proficiency of secondary school pupils and in Section 3 the qualifications required of secondary school teachers of English. Section 4 presents the results of an empirical study in which the first author surveyed the views of secondary school
teachers of English regarding teaching pronunciation. Section 5 is the discussion in which we discuss the implications of the results and we make recommendations regarding teacher
training and pronunciation lessons for secondary education in the Netherlands.

The present study examined the effects of a 24-session pronunciation course on participants' beliefs and perceived abilities, through their responses to survey questions. Japanese junior high school students (n = 66) participated in a pronunciation course, the main activity of which was one-on-one performance coaching/testing. A Likert-scale survey of respondents' perceived abilities regarding segmental and suprasegmental features were continually conducted throughout the course. The same survey was also administered to a control group, learning English at the same school but not participating in the course. Sign tests indicated that only in the case of the treatment group did the perceived pronunciation abilities significantly and substantially increase after a year. Rasch analyses of participants' responses indicated that their pre- and post-course perceived abilities were markedly different, and that difficulties of different segmental and suprasegmental elements relative to each other were rather stable over time. Qualitative and quantitative analyses of verbal comments collected at the final session revealed that participants were generally highly satisfied with the course
mainly because they (a) felt their abilities were improved, (b) enjoyed the one-on-one performance testing, and (c) were convinced of the importance of proper pronunciation.

Key Words: pronunciation, one-on-one performance testing, perceived abilities, Rasch analyses

This workshop was delivered in TESOL Arabia Conference-TACON 2015 in Dubai, UAE. This workshop was well attended (28 ppl). Participants found it highly useful and practical. Abstract (48 words) Many students

in Lebanon, French/English educated, reach university with poor pronunciation of various English words. Simplified phonetics is a practical way to fix Arab learners' English pronunciation and ultimately improve their communication skills. For example, " although " and " brochure " can be transcribed as [ol ‫ﺫ‬ ó] and [broshour] respectively.

This study aims at identifying the perception of students in using U-Dictionary in learning pronunciation. Speaking is one of the most challenging abilities to develop foreign language learners such as Indonesian and one of the components of speaking is pronunciation. People often find a problem with pronunciation when they speak, read, or listen to English words. In the digital era, people can learn anything from the internet platform, such as using online learning through apps at smartphones. This study is qualitative research and the writer describe the students’ perception in using U dictionary in learning pronunciation. The writers did an observation to English study program students from the fourth semester who are eligible for this research. There were 30 students participated as respondents and all of them were interviewed in order to have true information. The result shows that most of the students think that as English study program students, learning pronunciation is impo...

The aim of this publication is to provide an insight into the current
pronunciation teaching practices in a global context. On the basis of the findings, it provides the views and practices of university teachers of phonetics and phonology, as well as the opinion of Slovak learners of English on the importance of pronunciation, preference of native accents and accent goals, as well as the most preferred techniques to improve their pronunciation in formal school settings and informal situations.

This article presents the results of a research study based on two language teaching techniques, drilling and color-coding, and their effect on the correct pronunciation of the past tense phonemes /t/, /d/, and /ɪd/ in regular verbs in simple past tense when reading aloud; the population of this study was composed of twelve young adults. Qualitative and quantitative data from two instruments: an identification tally sheet and a questionnaire were gathered. The results obtained in the pre and post-test (identification tally sheet) and the performance of the participants from the experimental groups (B and C) showed that there was a positive impact on the accurate production of the past tense phonemes when reading aloud. Lastly, this research study provides evidence to claim the teaching of drilling and color-coding techniques are useful to pronounce the past tense phonemes /t/, /d/, and /ɪd/ in regular verbs correctly.

This paper presents an online course devised to meet the needs of Swedish primary school teachers who need to teach English to their pupils despite not having studied the language themselves more than minimally at tertiary level. Over a hundred teachers took the course as an online summer course. The course was on the learning and teaching of English pronunciation and grammar. Since Swedish primary school teachers often have significant Swedish accents and many cannot write a text in English without a number of characteristic grammatical errors, the course was designed to focus on a limited number of features of English grammar and pronunciation that are both frequently difficult for Swedish speakers and particularly salient, in addition to introducing the teachers to general principles of language education. Because the teachers were not all in Sweden at the time, it was deemed desirable to minimize the real-time interaction needed for the course. This produces particular challenges for the teaching of pronunciation. Ten strategies for teaching English pronunciation online at tertiary level were implemented. This paper reports the process of identifying the most prominent non-native features of each teacher’s pronunciation and working intensively to improve their pronunciation for these features. The strategies are presented and their effect on and reception by the teachers is accounted for with reference to previous research in the teaching and learning of pronunciation and in online learning. The lessons drawn from the first iteration of the course and how these have informed the upcoming second iteration are discussed.

For long, accent in learning a second language has been a predicament caused by idiosyncrasy, especially in language teaching, influenced even by some teachers themselves. There is a need to keep in mind that there are programs to improve accent of English learners, for example. The critical question is, is it a must to speak English as Americans, English, Irish, etc., to get the message across? And what about pronunciation of segmentals? Studies have shown that accent is not as vital in communication as it is pronunciation. All people have an accent when speaking English. Diversity of accents is a characteristic of one of the most spoken and most widely used language of the world. The lingua franca, English, has speakers from different regions of the planet. The fact is to be aware of how significant for communication intonation, rhythm and stress is; that is suprasegmentals. This paper emphasizes pronunciation of segmentals over suprasegmentals. It also tries to help relief the pain of those English learners concerned about their particular accent when speaking English.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the
fieldwork of a current doctoral thesis to
investigate the influence of a pronunciation
syllabus based on the Lingua Franca Core (LFC)
in improving the intelligibility and comprehensibility
of Arab learners. The paper will introduce
a sample of how this syllabus has been designed
based on a Contrastive Analysis (CA) between
the LFC and the phonology of Modern Standard
Arabic (MSA). It will then present a workable
example of how the pronunciation elements of
the LFC syllabus can be integrated in adopted
textbooks and discuss the classroom practice
which the LFC necessitates.

This study aims to shed light on pronunciation instruction by exploring teachers' beliefs and classroom practices regarding pronunciation teaching. In particular, the study investigates the relationship between Arabic language teachers' beliefs and their current pedagogical pronunciation practices. Data were collected from two groups of subjects (two teachers of Arabic and their 16 students) using different tasks: interviews, class observations, and questionnaires. The result analysis reveals the most frequently used pronunciation techniques in the two different classrooms and how both teachers and students perceived them presenting a brief overview of the way pronunciation is taught in Arabic classrooms illuminating teachers' tendencies and needs.

This is the handout for a presentation given at CamTESOL 2020.

Connected speech describes the pronunciation simplifications used by native and proficient speakers to enable them to speak more quickly and smoothly. The pronunciation of words can be very different from how they appear in writing or pronounced on their own. While textbooks often focus on “top-down” listening strategies (such as understanding gist or using background knowledge to predict content), “bottom-up” processing, from sound to meaning, is often overlooked. Students can become demotivated when hearing a native speaker for the first time, as they may be unable to recognize known words or hear the weak forms of grammatical constructions. However, connected speech generally follows set rules, and raising awareness of these rules can boost student listening skills and confidence. The workshop is intended as an introduction to teaching connected speech features. The presenter will explore the challenges learners face in understanding fast, natural English speech, inviting participants to share their teaching experiences. The presenter will summarize the main simplifications that proficient English speakers make, and introduce a variety of practical classroom activities that can support the development of listening skills at all proficiency levels.

Despite the unprecedented possibilities opened by the current technologies, the teaching of pronunciation has been mostly neglected in the teaching practices of the languages of the Iberian Peninsula as L2, even for languages which are largely taught, such as Spanish and Portuguese. In this chapter, after providing a survey of the principal resources useful for the teaching of pronunciation and phonetic training for Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Basque and Galician, two new resources for Galician pronunciation teaching are presented: the Dicionario de pronuncia da lingua galega (DLP, Dictionary of Pronunciation of the Galician Language) and the Corpus Oral Informatizado da Lingua Galega (CORILGA, Computerized Spoken Corpus of the Galician Language). Both resources are briefly described and some examples of their possibilities for use in the teaching of Galician as L2 are given.

Este estudio se propone analizar y comparar los principales constructos (inteligibilidad, comprensibilidad, acento extranjero, fluidez e irritabilidad) que intervienen en la percepción y evaluación de la pronunciación de una L2. Aunque en la bibliografía pueden encontrarse investigaciones que recogen las relaciones que se establecen entre algunas de estas dimensiones, aún permanece inexplorado el análisis conjunto de todas ellas, y son muy pocos los estudios que han considerado para el español como L2 una dimensión que no fuera el acento extranjero. Con el fin de analizar el papel y la relación que guardan entre sí estas dimensiones, se examinó en relación con cada una de ellas el proceso de evaluación que 44 evaluadores nativos (15 expertos y 29 no expertos) realizaban sobre ocho muestras orales de español como L2. Los resultados reflejan, entre otros datos, que los jueces tienden a sobrevalorar su capacidad para entender las muestras, que la inteligibilidad y la comprensibilidad guardan entre sí una estrecha relación, y que el acento extranjero es el constructo que más marca la diferencia en las valoraciones perceptivas entre jueces expertos y no expertos.

In diesem Beitrag soll unter Berücksichtigung von Internationalismen, die größere Lernprobleme bereiten als landläufig angenommen, gezeigt werden, welche Schritte bei einem nachhaltigen Wortakzenttraining durchlaufen werden müssen. Abschließend werden einige Erfahrungen zum Ausspracheerwerb bei Internationalismen durch Musik und Rhythmus vorgestellt.

Ars dicendi – ars orandi. The weight of the elocution in the lector ministration
The aim of this article is to show and to emphasize the importance of the art of elocution in the lector ministration. The catholic liturgy is a part of oral culture and steel this oral dimension has conserved the priority. Christianity is not the religion of book, but the religion of the living, incarnate Word – Logos. These facts show us the absolute necessity of teaching how to read and communicate the Holy Bible. We should also realize that for modern believers the Sunday Mass is the unique contact with the Holy Bible. This fact makes the lectors more responsible for their liturgical service. The liturgy is a special communication – sacral and official, what demands the perfect elocution. The voice of lector is the important instrument which imparts the message from God. Unfortunately, we can hear too often and too much incorrect realizations. The Bible is reading too fast, lectors don’t know the rules of accentuation, intonation. They also don’t know the specificity of biblical language, where is plenty of Hebraic nominations, very strange for polish phonetic system. This article wanted to proof that the reading the Bible is not the easy and banal role. There is steel a need to teach the art of beautiful speaking and reading. It should be also the way of worship God – in fact ars dicendi, known from the ancient Greece and Rome as the art of rhetoric speech, is in the Catholic Church ars orandi – the art of prayer.

Intelligibility of Non-native English: Norms, Attitudes and Listening Comprehension
The use of English as an international language challenges traditional views on effective communication, communicative competence and native-speaker norms. Resulting from the wide-range use of English in international contexts by non-native speakers, learners are exposed to an increasing number of non-native accents. Although accentedness is a salient feature, which is frequently associated with communicative difficulties, it does not necessarily reduce intelligibility. The present study aims to examine the relationship between attitudes connected to non-native accents, perceived comprehensibility and their relationship to actual comprehensibility. The results reveal that native speakers are evaluated more positively both in terms of personal attributes and perceived comprehensibility. In addition, a negative correlation exists between perceived comprehensibility and actual comprehension. Although listeners evaluated non-native speakers less positively than native speakers, they were able to
understand them better. In line with recent studies, these results question native speaker norms and the commonly held belief that accent inevitably causes communication problems, and emphasizes the need for foregrounding intelligibility.

If you are looking for an easy-to-read and practical guide to teaching pronunciation, Beyond Repeat After Me: Teaching Pronunciation to English Learners, by Marla Tritch Yoshida, might be of interest to you. Overall, the book is 188 pages in length and has 15 main chapters and five supplementary ones. The book looks at the theory and classroom practice of teaching segmental (individual sounds) and suprasegmental
(affecting more than one sound segment) features of English. It focuses primarily on the pronunciation of American English (AE) but does not exclude other varieties.

Anyone who is interested in the teaching of pronunciation is aware of the Cinderella metaphor. It is one that I have heard many, many times at professional conferences such as International TESOL. But where did the Cinderella image come from? In 1969, L.G Kelly said 'It will be obvious that pronunciation has been the Cinderella of language teaching, largely because the linguistic sciences on which its teaching rests did not achieve the sophistication of semantics, lexicology, and grammar until the 19th century' (p.87). But note the verb tense in Kelly: 'Pronunciation has been the Cinderella of language teaching'. Kelly is saying that pronunciation is no longer the Cinderella but is rather an equal part of the language teaching family. And yet the metaphor did not go away. In 1996, in the first version of Celce-Murcia, Brinton, and Goodwin's book, pronunciation was said to suffer from 'the Cinderella syndrome, kept behind doors and out of sight' (1996, p.323). Even four decades after Kelly, Adrian Underhill said, 'I suggest that pronunciation is the Cinderella of language teaching. It has been neglected and disconnected from other language learning activities' (http://www.adrianunderhill.com/2010/09/22/pronunciation-the-cinderella­of-lanquaqe-teachingl). So it appears that pronunciation practitioners never got the message that pronunciation was Cinderella no more, and the metaphor has continued to have power over how we see ourselves: victimized, neglected, and left at home when everyone else goes to the language-teaching ball.

This study examined whether differences in phonological awareness were related to differences in speech comprehensibility. Seventeen adults who learned English as a
foreign language (EFL) in academic settings completed 14 tests of phonological awareness that measured their explicit knowledge of English phonological structures, and three tests of phonological short term memory. The same participants also read aloud
a passage and narrated picture stories. These tasks were used by 12 native speakers of English to rate the EFL speakers’ comprehensibility on a 9-point scale. There was a strong positive correlation between composite phonological awareness scores and rated comprehensibility and between composite phonological awareness scores and phonological short term memory. The correlation between rated comprehensibility and phonological short term memory was not significant. A simple linear regression
analysis showed that approximately 19% of the variance in rated comprehensibility scores was accounted for by composite phonological awareness scores. The study offers support to the view that phonological awareness is related to differences in speech comprehensibility and the results suggest that form-focused instruction in phonology may contribute to the comprehensibility of EFL speakers.

Songs media is the kind of precisely media to learn pronunciation. This research aims at improving pronunciation using English songs. The Object of the study are three students of Mathematics education ( UPY ). The method of the study is using Action research. The researcher is using English songs as media to improve pronunciation. This research will be taken 4 meeting. In every treatment the three participants are asked to listen the song while see the lyrics first and the second, the participants are asked to read aloud. The songs would be played 5 times and before real test, the song would be played 3 times to make the participants habitual with the songs. Then every treatment the researcher count the correct words that they could pronounce correctly. The result shown that the participants pronunciation slightly increased. The participants are more interest and they have motivated to learn pronunciation through english songs. Two participants shown positive impact and the other participant tend to in the down position due to her mother tongue is very strong.

靜哲人著『英語授業の心・技・体』（研究社）が、松村昌紀（編）『タスク・ベースの英語指導—TBLTの理解と実践』（大修館）の第２章である福田純也著「タスク・ベースの言語指導と認知のメカニズム -- 第二言語の学習を促す心理的要因」のpp. 43-44で要約引用されている。しかしながら、その引用のされかたは『英語授業の心・技・体』の内容に照らして誤りであると筆者は考える。そこでその旨を同書の編者である松村昌紀氏および当該章の著者である福田純也氏に申し立てたところ、当該箇所が誤引用であるとは考えない旨の回答を得た。それから約２ヶ月に渡る交渉を経て、最終的には「同書が重版される際には『英語授業の心・技・体』に対する引用は削除される」ことが合意されたのだが、当該箇所は誤引用でも不適切でもないという松村氏・福田氏の主張は最後まで変わらなかった。その経緯を記録し、筆者と松村氏・福田氏側双方の主張の詳細を記した上で、当該引用がなぜどのように誤りであると筆者が考えるのかを明らかにする。