UNIVERSIDAD AUTÓNOMA DE SANTO DOMINGO

(UASD)
FACULTAD DE HUMANIDADES
POST GRADO

MASTER’S DEGREES IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS TO THE

TEACHING OF ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

MASTER OF ARTS (PHONETICS)

Professor: Hugo Eduardo Santana Ventura

SECTION 8: TEACHING PRONUNCIATION; BEYOND ‘LISTEN AND

REPEAT’: PRONUNCIATION TEACHING MATERIALS AND
THEORIES OF SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Presented by:

Leonel Escolástico Rodriguez

Santo Domingo,
2020
 Leonel Escolastico Rodriguez

Section 8: Teaching Pronunciation; Beyond ‘listen and repeat’:

Pronunciation Teaching Material and Theories of Second Language
Acquisition

In this section we can appreciate an aspect of learning which could be included in

any lesson or can form a part of any lesson.
Pronunciation also consider as phonology includes the roles of sounds and
segments, as well as suprasegmental features such as rhythm, stress, and
intonation. Second language learners face the issue of transferring suprasegmental
features when they are learning a new language. Few of them are able to speak
without showing evidence of these suprasegmental features. Nevertheless,
showing evidence of the first language is viewed as strength of the cultural identity.
Over the last century, approaches to teaching pronunciation have evolved
greatly, shifting away from a focus on the correct development of individual
speech sounds and toward a focus on the wider, communicative dimensions of
related speech. Many teachers, on the other hand, are uncertain about the state of
pronunciation and whether or not it should be given systematic attention in a
language class.
The prosodic features of language, such as stress and rhythm, intonation,
pitch variation, and volume, must all be addressed in addition to teaching learners
how to make specific sounds. Hebert shows teachers how to create a diagnostic
profile of their students' pronunciation problems as a basis for offering input and
preparing instruction. She offers a method for teaching these global features, along
with some specific examples.
The rise of direct method and audiolingualism has prominently led only to
the rise of the communicative language teaching (CLT) as well as the natural
approach (Krashen, 1982). The second language phonology research has
meanwhile revealed a wide range of factors that influence the acquisition of
pronunciation beyond the behaviorist concept of habits, including the cognitive,
linguistic and universal conditions, psychology and sociology.
Teaching pronunciation is very interesting. Nevertheless, there are some
arguments that are against it. The first, based on the critical period hypothesis,
asserts that it is nearly difficult for adults to learn native-like pronunciation in a
foreign language; the second, based largely on Krashen's (1982) work, maintains
that pronunciation is an acquired ability and that concentrated learning is at best
ineffective and at worst harmful.
Performances of elocution are perhaps the oldest way of teaching
pronunciation: repetition and aloud reading. Many language classrooms still
represent the iconic picture of students chanting "the rain in Spain fell mostly on
the plain." Such approaches became the stock-in-trade in language teaching with
the advent of recording technologies and the emergence of Audiolingualism, and,
although largely debunked in the fields of grammar and vocabulary teaching, the
‘listen and repeat' technique has continued in the teaching of pronunciation.
The systematic use of decontextualized vocabulary and a lack of basis in
the reality of human speech is perhaps the most criticized feature of pronunciation
teaching materials. The use of language to convey messages is one of Krashen's
(1982) chief principles, which has been expressed in relation to the teaching of
pronunciation, by scholars including Pennington and Richards (1986), who stress
that it is to divorce pronunciation from contact and other forms of language use.
The psychological and sociological elements of pronunciation instruction
have been virtually overlooked in instructional materials. The way a person talks
has a lot to do with the impact he or she needs to make in a given situation. The
further learners identify with native speakers of a second language, the more likely
they are to talk like native speakers, according to one theory. Learners who desire
to maintain identity with their own culture or social grouping, on the other hand,
can use a foreign accent as a marker of in-group membership, either knowingly or
unconsciously.
In the coming years, authors of pronunciation teaching materials will
certainly pay more attention to learners' sociolinguistic circumstances as well as
the political ramifications of attitudes against nonnative accents. They'll also
increasingly incorporate confidence-building and reflective exercises into their
programs to address the social dimensions of pronunciation preparation.