Abstract
Both L2 learners and their teachers are concerned about pronunciation. While an unspoken classroom goal is often native-accented speech (i.e., a spoken variety of the mother tongue that it not geographically confined to a place within a particular country), pronunciation researchers tend to agree that comprehensible speech (i.e., speech that can be easily understood by an interlocutor) is a more realistic goal. A host of studies have demonstrated that certain types of training can result in more comprehensible L2 speech. This contribution considers research on training the perception and production of both segmental (i.e., speech sounds) and suprasegmental features (i.e., stress, rhythm, tone, intonation). Before we can determine whether a given pronunciation feature is easy or difficult to teach and—more importantly—to learn, we must focus on: 1) setting classroom priorities that place comprehensibility of L2 speech at the forefront; and 2) relying upon insights gained through research into L2 pronunciation training. The goal of the mini-review is to help contextualize the papers presented in this collection.
Highlights
Researchers and teachers alike agree that most adult second language (L2) learners will not sound like native speakers and that speaking with a nonnative accent is normal (Derwing and Munro, 2009)
Recent studies demonstrate that teachers engage only intermittently in classroom pronunciation training, primarily because they lack training (Derwing and Munro, 2015) or confidence (Baker, 2011) or because they have relatively little knowledge about how to teach and assess pronunciation (Baker and Murphy, 2011; Baker, 2014; Couper, 2017)
Much of the research investigating the effectiveness of pronunciation training uses measures of understanding including comprehensibility ratings (e.g., Foote and McDonough, 2017; Martin, 2018) or intelligibility tasks (e.g., Derwing et al, 2014), often together with ratings of fluency and/or foreign accentedness
Summary
Researchers and teachers alike agree that most adult second language (L2) learners will not sound like native speakers and that speaking with a nonnative accent is normal (Derwing and Munro, 2009). Recent studies demonstrate that teachers engage only intermittently in classroom pronunciation training, primarily because they lack training (Derwing and Munro, 2015) or confidence (Baker, 2011) or because they have relatively little knowledge about how to teach and assess pronunciation (Baker and Murphy, 2011; Baker, 2014; Couper, 2017). The Mandarin native speakers who were trained in English vowel perception in Wang (2002) did not improve in their production of English vowels, but those in Thomson (2011) did Given these inconsistent findings, it is clear that other factors must be at play in the ultimate success of pronunciation training. Additional factors may include participant’s age of learning (Aoyama et al, 2008; Baker, 2010), quality of target language interactions (Derwing and Munro, 2015), motivational factors (Nagle, 2018), and learners’ involvement in instructional decisions (Jenkins, 2004)
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