href="https://www.tedu.edu.tr/en/sinem-sonsaat-hegelheimer">Sinem Sonsaat-Hegelheimer, Iowa State University, and Shannon McCrocklin, Southern Illinois University)
At the heart of pronunciation teaching are the materials used to teach pronunciation. Effective materials should demonstrate effectiveness in promoting learning, in creating interest for teachers, and should be based on research findings. This chapter provides an excellent rubric for teachers to use when choosing resources.
Critical Issues
Terminology
The chapters reflect different approaches to teaching pronunciation, nowhere more than in the varied terminology used by the authors. Although we considered requiring uniform terminology, we decided that it was more important that authors use the terminology that is theoretically and practically comfortable for them. As a result, some things may be unclear to readers who are unfamiliar with the different names for pronunciation features, especially for suprasegmental features. Suprasegmentals have a long history of being described and named in different ways, although for the purposes of this book, the differences are minor enough that they can be ignored by teachers. Nonetheless, it is helpful to list the terms used by various authors in Table 1.1. Thought groups refer to the speaker’s breaking speech up into logical and typically grammatical phrases of around five to seven words. They are the structure in which all suprasegmentals (except word stress) occur. Prominence refers to speakers’ highlighting particular words within a phrase to call attention to them (e.g., I HATE eating that stuff!). Intonation refers to the movement of pitch across the thought group, and especially at the end of a phrase (e.g., Really? You hate it?, both with rising pitch). Rhythm refers to the patterns of strong and weak syllables across a thought group. A language like English has large differences in syllable length, while other languages, such as varieties of Chinese, do not. Finally, word stress refers to the dictionary patterns of prominence within a word. But since not all languages use stress, we also refer to word prosody and tone.
Table 1.1 Names given to suprasegmentals by different authors.
| Names for Suprasegmental Features | |
|---|---|
| Word Stress | Lexical stress, Syllable stress |
| Thought Groups | Phrasing, Phrase groups, Tone units, Tonality |
| Rhythm | Rhythm (sometimes referred to by duration) |
| Prominence | Nuclear stress, Primary (phrase) stress, Emphatic stress, Sentence stress, Phrase stress, Contrastive stress, Tonic syllable, Pitch accent |
| Intonation | Tune, Contour, Tonicity |
| Other Terms | Tone, Pitch accent (types of word prosody) |
Why Research Findings Should Matter to Teachers
There is a clear need for pronunciation instruction to be guided by empirical evidence. Sometimes intuitions on which teachers rely are wrong. For instance, in a teacher-focused publication, Thompson (2011) suggests that the distinction between English /p/ and /b/ is that the former is produced when exhaling, while the latter is made while inhaling. This latter claim is patently false; English has no ingressive phonemes. As any introductory linguistics textbook will show, these two stops differ in voicing; in addition, in word initial position, aspiration of the /p/ further distinguishes the sounds. It may be that the aspiration caused Thompson and others (e.g., Usher, 1995) to assume that the expulsion of air accompanying /p/ is its only defining feature, and that /b/ must be produced in an opposite way. These “folk” intuitions can have unintentional consequences. Best outcomes for pronunciation students are dependent on the quality of the instruction they receive. Research has shown that ill-informed teachers can actually induce errors in their learners’ speech (Derwing & Munro, 2015; Wang & Munro, 2004). It is thus crucial for language instructors to have a good grasp of the linguistic factors involved in pronunciation in addition to strong pedagogical skills.
The topic of L2 pronunciation, almost forgotten in teacher training programs and language classrooms during the communicative era, has made a dramatic comeback reflected in:
the numbers of new PhDs working on pronunciation topics
the remarkable increase of research being published across a wide range of journals
the establishment of a dedicated journal for the field (Journal of Second Language Pronunciation)
the explosion of professional books looking at various aspects of pronunciation for different languages in the past decade
the extension of pronunciation teaching voices beyond English contexts into other languages, especially Mandarin, Spanish, German and French
the connections of L2 pronunciation across applied linguistics, teaching, computer science and engineering research
extensive research on pronunciation teacher cognition and learner beliefs
the increased attention to new types of technology for pronunciation teaching and learning
the greater visibility of the field reflected in conferences highlighting the research and teaching of L2 pronunciation.
These advances are important, but pedagogy is often still overly influenced by traditional models emphasizing controlled practice such as reading aloud, repeating, and imitating native models. Traditional approaches to teaching pronunciation are typically based on descriptions of sound systems and expert views on challenges faced by L2 learners. They rarely provide evidence that the teaching works (Levis, 2017) or that one approach works better than another. Nor do they explain why certain approaches to teaching work, whether improvement as a result of instruction lasts over time, or whether improvement transfers to untrained contexts.
Nonetheless, as research into L2 pronunciation expands, suggestions for changes to pedagogy are also changing. There is an increasing emphasis on integrating pronunciation with other aspects of language (Derwing et al., 2021; Jones, 2016; Levis & Grant, 2003; Ruivivar & Collins, 2019); on perception training and the increasing use of approaches such as High Variability Phonetic Training (Thomson, 2018); and on approaches that focus on discourse-based rather than word-based and sound-based teaching (Gluhareva & Prieto, 2017; Hardison, 2004; Hirata, 2004). Moreover, we now have evidence regarding the use of task-based pronunciation teaching for pronunciation improvement (Mora & Levkina, 2017); on the primacy of intelligibility and comprehensibility as goals over accentedness (Derwing & Munro, 2015; Levis, 2018); on pronunciation teaching in communicative classrooms (Foote et al., 2016); and on new approaches to teaching pronunciation using technology (O’Brien et al., 2018) and coaching methods (Baker, 2021).
Another issue facing instructors is when to introduce pronunciation, especially since many of the available resources are intended for intermediate or advanced level students. Darcy et al. (2012) suggest that pronunciation instruction should be included “in the first year of extensive exposure to the L2” (p. 94) during the period which Derwing and Munro (2015) have labelled the Window of Maximal Opportunity. Derwing and Munro’s longitudinal study of naturalistic L2 phonological development (in the absence of instruction) indicated that most change happens in the early part of the first year of massive exposure. Thus, it makes sense to capitalize on what Darcy et al. (2012) called the time of greatest pronunciation malleability.
If pronunciation is to be initiated when learners