The acquisition of English pronunciation: learners' views

Abstract

This paper aims at describing English learners' views on the acquisition of the phonetic component of English by focusing on their awareness of the difficulty and importance of English pronunciation as well as their beliefs about influential factors in the acquisition of pronunciation and their attitudes towards English accents. It also aims at examining the differences in phonetic awareness, beliefs and attitudes between learners of English with different first languages (Basque and Spanish). All the participants (n=86) were asked to complete several questionnaires, including a background questionnaire and a specific questionnaire on awareness, beliefs and attitudes. The results indicate that pronunciation is a difficult and important skill for all learners. It was also found that learners consider contact with native speakers and ear training as the most influential factors in the acquisition of pronunciation and that the difficulty of some English accents is related to learners attitudes towards these accents. The results also indicate that all learners tend to share the same awareness of difficulty, importance of, beliefs about and attitudes towards different accents independently of their first language.