“I am not a native speaker …”: Exploring the perceived pronunciation teaching difficulties faced by Korean public elementary school English teachers

Abstract

Through the conceptual lens of the Nativeness Principle—the perception that it is both desirable and possible to achieve nativelike pronunciation—this study set out to examine the perceived difficulties Korean public elementary school English teachers face when teaching English pronunciation. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 14 Korean in-service elementary school English teachers to investigate their experiences with pronunciation teaching and the difficulties that they have encountered. From the collected data, teachers' shared difficulties emerged under three main themes, self-related, students-related, and curriculum & materials-related difficulties. Under these main themes, various difficulty-related sub-themes were identified including lack of confidence in one's pronunciation, lack of pronunciation ability, lack of pronunciation teaching knowledge and skill, dealing with students' pronunciation prejudice, dealing with students with different levels of pronunciation, lack of pronunciation teaching time, and lack of teaching materials. Upon further analysis, many of the difficulties teachers reported were found to have direct connections to Nativeness Principle related factors. We discuss possible pathways to mitigate the shared difficulties teachers reported in this study and conclude by providing directions for further research in this area.