A Qualitative Report on the Perceived Awareness of Pronunciation Instruction: Increasing Needs and Expectations of Prospective EFL Teachers

Abstract

English has become an international language used for international and intercultural communication among non-native speakers of English which outnumbered monolingual native speakers Crystal (English as a global language, Cambridge: CUP 1997). With an advanced understanding of communicative competence Hymes (Sociolinguistics, Baltimore: Penguin Books, pp. 269–293 1972) and intelligible communication, language scholars contemporarily contend that explicit pronunciation is necessary in language curricula Celce-Murcia et al. (Teaching pronunciation: A Reference for teachers of English to speakers of other languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996; Jenkins Applied Linguistics, 23(1): 83–103 2002; Levis TESOL Quarterly, 39(3): 369–377 2005). Given the importance of the expanding global use of English, the research focus underpinning the paper was, therefore, to investigate prospective EFL teachers’ awareness of the importance of pronunciation instruction in English language teacher education program in Turkey. Using an ecological perspective comprising qualitative data collection tools such class observations and interviews, the complete picture of how prospective EFL teachers perceive pronunciation instruction in their program is culminated. After the discussion of the major findings referring to the scholarly literature, some implications are explicated to the realm of English language teaching, which are only suggestive rather than conclusive.