It’s All in Teachers’ Hands’: The English Pronunciation Teaching in Europe Survey from a Polish Perspective

Abstract

This paper aims to overview the main findings from a European-wide on-line survey of English pronunciation teaching practices (English Pronunciation Teaching in Europe Survey—EPTiES) for Polish and European respondents. The European context provided by the EPTiES is used as the background for the discussion of pronunciation teaching priorities and practices in Poland as seen through the teachers’ eyes. The data from Polish respondents are summarised for major characteristics and compared to the answers from other respondents from around Europe and the results reported in earlier studies conducted in Poland. The focus is on teachers, their views and practices in pronunciation teaching, the training they received, their attitudes towards pronunciation teaching and, finally, their beliefs concerning their learners’ aims and preferences in pronunciation learning. The aim is to explore the specificity of the Polish context for English pronunciation teaching in Europe, with similarities and differences highlighted and discussed in the course of the quantitative and qualitative data analysis. The ultimate goal is to show that only by investigating the attitudes and practices of language teachers can we hope to improve the quality of pronunciation teaching; as it is all in teachers’ hands, their training, attitudes and beliefs are crucial. And it is the training that requires most attention, as Polish teachers of English are well educated in their own pronunciation, but not in pronunciation teaching, which is virtually absent from teacher training they received.