1 The importance of pronunciation teaching

1.1 Pronunciation teaching throughout history

1.2 Teaching pronunciation nowadays

1 The importance of pronunciation teaching

The role of pronunciation is an essential aspect of language teaching, as it belongs to one of the four basic skills of English learning: Reading, Writing, Listening and finally, the one which is related to pronunciation: Speaking.

However, the study of pronunciation, has been neglected for a long time since it was believed that native-like pronunciation was merely a utopian goal which can never be achieved by speakers of other languages (Kun-Ting Hsieh, Da-Hui Dong, and Li-Yi Wang, 2013).

In response to that, a more modest and realistic goal is to enable learners to surpass the threshold level so that their pronunciation will not detract from their ability to communicate (Celce-Murcia 1996 p.8).

Furthermore, according to Celce-Murcia (1996) having established that intelligible pronunciation is one of the necessary components of oral communication, here is where the importance of teaching pronunciation appears, and it indicates that the pronunciation of unintelligible speakers of English can be improved with constant exposure to L2.

1.1 Pronunciation teaching throughout history

To begin with, the study of pronunciation was largely irrelevant during the first methods and approaches used in the field of language teaching, such as Grammar Translation and Reading-Based Approaches, in which oral communication was undervalued (Gilbert 1994).

Successors to these approaches are the Direct Method and the Innovative Naturalistic methods which taught pronunciation through intuition and imitation. Once the study of pronunciation initiated, several contributions to its teaching emerged and the first contribution was the invention of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) (Celce-Murcia 1996 p.3).

The following methods eventually introduced new ways for teaching pronunciation. Among these methods are the Audiolingualism, which illustrated to students how to articulate the sounds; the Silent Way, which focused on the accurate production of individual sounds, and finally the Communicative Approach which is the currently dominant in language teaching which emphasizes that the prime goal of language is communication (Celce-Murcia 1996).

1.2 Teaching pronunciation nowadays

The most recent attempts to teach pronunciation are based on the foundations of the Communicative Approach.

Despite the fact that most of the techniques and materials used for the teaching of pronunciation until today are the traditional ones, a new direction has been used for several teachers nowadays and that technique consists on teaching suprasegmental features of language (i.e. rhythm, stress, and intonation) in order to make an optimal and complete study of pronunciation (Celce-Murcia 1996).

References

Celce-Murcia, Marianne, Donna Brinton and Janet M. Goodwin. (1996). Teaching pronunciation: A reference for teachers of English to speakers of other languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gilbert, Judy. 1994. Intonation: A navigation guide for the listener. Pronunciation pedagogy and theory: New views, new directions, ed. by Joan Morley, 36-48. Alexandria, VA: TESOL.

Kun-Ting Hsieh, Da-Hui Dong, and Li-Yi Wang. (2013). Shadowing Technique in English Intonation Instruction. Taiwan Journal of Linguistics. Vol. 11.2, 43-66.

Luo, Dean, Yutaka Yamauchi, and Nobuaki Minematsu. (2010). Speech analysis for automatic evaluation of shadowing. Paper presented at the Interspeech 2010 Joint Satellite Workshop on "Second Language Studies: Acquisition, Learning, Education and Technology", Tokyo: Japan.