Pronunciation

Summary

The goal of pronunciation teaching is to get your students to speak with an accent that is easily comprehensible to listeners who are themselves speakers of other mother tongues: it's not usually to get them to speak with one of the ‘native’ accents.

• 62 Teach pronunciation (a little)

• 63 Drill isolated sounds

• 64 Contrast with mother-tongue sounds

• 65 Teach ‘international’ pronunciation

62 Teach pronunciation (a little)

Of all the aspects of language – vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, spelling, the four skills and so on – pronunciation is probably the one that needs least teaching.

I never used to teach pronunciation at all, because in the place where I worked pronunciation was not treated as an explicit teaching goal, and there were no pronunciation explanations or exercises in the Ministryapproved textbooks. Later, when I learned about teaching situations elsewhere, I discovered that this was unusual: in most places pronunciation does get some attention. But it appears (though I have no research evidence to support this) to be less emphasized than it used to be. This is probably due to the changing context of English teaching. The goal of speaking English like a native speaker has been largely replaced by the aim of being able to communicate in a variety of situations worldwide, usually in interaction with other people whose mother tongue is not English. So we want our students to speak using pronunciation that is widely and easily understood, not necessarily one that is a replica of one of the native English accents. A mother-tongue accent is perfectly acceptable, provided that it is not so strong as to make difficulties for the listener (see Tip 63).

If this is accepted as the aim, then in many cases students can learn to pronounce English fairly satisfactorily without much explicit instruction, though this depends, of course, on how difficult the pronunciation of English sounds is for your students . The primary model for students’ pronunciation is teacher talk (see my tips on this later in this book); but there's also television, movies, the internet, popular songs, and so on.

Having said this, however, some learners encounter specific problems which can be helped by occasional focused teaching. The other tips in this section make a few suggestions. See also the book referred to below.