Teachers' and Learners' Beliefs About Pronunciation Instruction in Tertiary English as a Foreign Language Education.

Loc Tan Nguyen,Tu Thanh Le,Bui Phu Hung,Uyen Thi Thuy Duong

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.739842

Abstract

Recent studies have sought to describe and understand English as a second/foreign language (ESL/EFL) teachers’ pronunciation teaching practices in different contexts, but much less research has examined how teachers and learners perceive pronunciation instruction at tertiary level, especially in EFL settings. The qualitative study reported in this paper extends this line of research by investigating the beliefs of teachers and learners with regard to pronunciation instruction in tertiary EFL education in Vietnam. Data were collected from individual semi-structured interviews with six EFL teachers and focus group interviews with 24 students (four students per group) at a Vietnamese university. The study adopted a content-based approach to qualitative data analysis. The findings show that both the teachers and students considered pronunciation instruction an important component in tertiary EFL programs, which deserves explicit and systematic delivery. The findings suggest that both groups of participants believed communicative pronunciation teaching to have the potential to improve learners’ pronunciation and facilitate their general communicative purposes. The study has implications for language curriculum design and L2 pronunciation teaching and learning.

Highlights

Beliefs are conceptualized as “propositions individuals consider to be true [...], which are often tacit, have a strong evaluative and affective component, provide a basis for action, and are resistant to change” (Borg, 2011, p. 370–371)
The findings showed that the teachers lacked initial training and teacher professional learning (TPL) opportunities in pronunciation pedagogy and that their pronunciation teaching was restricted to error correction through recasts and/or prompts
The teachers added that teaching pronunciation at tertiary level helps improve students’ pronunciation, listening, and speaking skills, which are essential for their future jobs

Summary

Introduction

Beliefs are conceptualized as “propositions individuals consider to be true [...], which are often tacit, have a strong evaluative and affective component, provide a basis for action, and are resistant to change” (Borg, 2011, p. 370–371). Learners’ beliefs can influence both their learning process and outcomes (Ellis, 2008). As Ha and Nguyen (2021) argue, incongruence in the beliefs of teachers and learners may lead to negative effects but congruence can facilitate the process and outcomes of learning. It is important for teachers to “make their own beliefs about language learning explicit, to find out about their students’ beliefs, to help their students become aware of and to evaluate their own beliefs and to address any mismatch between their own and their students’ belief systems” Recent decades have seen growing research interest in teacher and learner beliefs about language education generally, but teachers’ and learners’

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