English Pronunciation Teaching Research Articles

Status Quo and Prospective of WeChat in Improving Chinese English Learners’ Pronunciation

With the ubiquitous usage of wireless, portable, and handheld devices gaining popularity in 21st century, the revolutionary mobile technology introduces digital new media to educational settings, which has changed the way of traditional teaching and learning. WeChat is one of the most popular social networking applications in China featured by its interactivity and real-time communication that has attracted attention of educators to its pedagogical value. This study evaluates the utilization of WeChat in mobile learning and, in particular, its potential for improving English pronunciation among English learners in China. It probes into the perennial problems of Chinese students in English pronunciation acquisition and oral practice, discusses WeChat’s support functions in mobile learning, demonstrates the relevant empirical studies of WeChat in teaching and learning, and analyses the potential value of using WeChat in improving English pronunciation. Examinations in this paper enable one to reflect on the strengths of mobile learning by WeChat and to explore how this social media tool is likely to solve the pronunciation difficulties of Chinese English learners. It is found that applying WeChat to English pronunciation teaching and practicing helps create better self-directed learning environment, enhance learning flexibility and improve oral learning effectiveness. It is hopefully that insights gained from examining how WeChat helps improve English pronunciation learning will shed light on further innovations of teaching designs in this area.

Rhythm in Ethiopian English: Implications for the Teaching of English Prosody

In order to verify that English speeches produced by Ethiopian speakers fall under syllable-timed or stress-timed rhythm, the study tried to examine the nature of stress and rhythm in the pronunciation of Ethiopian speakers of English by focusing on one language group speaking Amharic as a native language. Using acoustic analysis of the speeches recorded from four Amharic speaking learners and two Canadian native speakers of English, comparison was made between pitch contours and length of speeches between speech samples of Amharic speakers with native speakers who are used in this study as a point of reference. The result of acoustic analysis showed that Amharic native samples displayed actual peaks on almost all words, taking longer time of articulation. It can be said that acoustic measures the study used for prosodic assessment of Ethiopian English exemplified the most occurring production tendencies of pronunciation that learners should give attention to. English pronunciation teaching to Ethiopians should involve the practice of stressing, un-stressing and rhythm to help learners improve their pronunciation from the influence of the syllable-timed rhythm of their mother tongue.

THE PRONUNCIATION COMPONENT IN ESL LESSONS: TEACHERS’ BELIEFS AND PRACTICES

Research has shown that teachers’ beliefs on teaching and learning exert an influence on their actual classroom practices. In the teaching of English pronunciation, teachers’ beliefs play a crucial role in the choice of pronunciation components taught in the ESL classrooms. This paper explores teachers’ beliefs about teaching English pronunciation in Malaysian classrooms and the extent to which these beliefs influenced the teachers’ classroom instructions. Employing a multiple case study of five ESL teachers in secondary schools, this study investigated the beliefs the teachers have formed about pronunciation focused areas and classroom practices in teaching English pronunciation. Data were collected through actual classroom observations and semi-structured interviews with the teachers and students. The findings of the study found that ESL teachers seem to believe that pronunciation skills are to be taught integratedly with other English language skills. Results also indicate a discrepancy between these teachers’ beliefs on the focused areas of pronunciation and the stated curriculum specifications. Additionally, the ESL teachers seem to have vague and contradictory beliefs about pronunciation focused areas. These beliefs are based on their previous language learning and professional experience as well as other contextual factors such as examination demands and time constraints. As a result, these beliefs lead to the pronunciation component being neglected despite it being stipulated by the curriculum.

Why Is English Pronunciation Ignored by EFL Teachers in Their Classes?

<p>Understandable pronunciation is an important part of communicative competence. Individuals who have acceptable pronunciation can easily improve their language skills better than those who have weak pronunciation. Thus, English pronunciation is very significant for successful communication. Despite the fact that English pronunciation is very important for oral communication and communicative competence, it is sometimes neglected in many language teaching programs. This study examined Iranian teachers’ views toward English pronunciation instruction. A quantitative method was used to gather data by an instrument. The researchers used a questionnaire as the instrument of this study. 100 teachers voluntarily participated in this study. Data were collected and analyzed. The findings of this paper indicated that lack of time, motivation, resources, materials, and educational facilities like computer technologies prevented teachers from teaching pronunciation and if teachers want to include pronunciation into their classes, they should be equipped with these factors that can increase their success in teaching English pronunciation.</p>

How Can EFL Teachers Help EFL Learners Improve Their English Pronunciation?

One of the important parts of foreign language teaching and learning is English pronunciation because it impacts learners' communicative competence and performance. Lack of pronunciation skills reduces learners’ self-confidence and limit their social interactions. EFL teachers can help their learners obtain the necessary skills of pronunciation they need for effective communication. In this paper, the researchers define the term pronunciation, explain the importance of pronunciation, declare the goals of English pronunciation, state the aspects of English pronunciation, elaborate the reason of integrating pronunciation in EFL classes, express techniques for teaching English pronunciation, and mention implications for the learning and teaching of English pronunciation. The review of literature indicates that EFL teachers play a vital role in improving the learners’ pronunciation skill.

English pronunciation teaching at different educational levels: Insights into teachers’ perceptions and actions

The aim of the present paper is to reflect upon the place of pronunciation in English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching at different educational levels in Poland. To collect the data, an on-line survey was conducted among EFL professionals teaching at primary, lower secondary, and higher secondary schools in Poland. The questions focused on the respondents’ beliefs about pronunciation, teachers’ competences regarding pronunciation and pronunciation teaching, and the pronunciation teaching techniques they use. The results depict the most and least frequently used pronunciation teaching techniques at each of the three educational stages, and the beliefs of EFL teachers in Poland regarding pronunciation teaching.

The Teaching of English Pronunciation: Perceptions of Indonesian School Teachers and University Students

<p>This study aimed to explore teachers’ and students’ perception of pronunciation teaching in Indonesian EFL classrooms, particularly on (1) the difficulty of English pronunciation, (2) the reasons for the difficulty, (3) the inclusion of pronunciation in EFL classrooms, (4) the goal of pronunciation teaching, (5) priorities in pronunciation teaching, and (6) techniques in pronunciation teaching. To achieve the purpose, a written questionnaire was distributed to 110 Indonesian school teachers and 230 Indonesian university students. The collected data were submitted to independent two-sample t test to determine the significant mean differences between the teacher and student participants. The results of the study discovered that almost all of the respondents perceived English pronunciation as one of the most difficult areas in English learning. The participants also agreed that two most significant reasons for the difficultly were related to students’ first language (L1). Regarding these results, the participants strongly agreed on the inclusion of pronunciation in EFL classrooms with intelligibility as the goal of pronunciation teaching. Moreover, segmental features such as consonants and vowels as well as sentence stress became the priorities in pronunciation teaching for EFL learners. Finally, teacher explanation in students’ L1, followed by demonstration of how to produce the English phonemes, is significantly rated as the better way to teach English pronunciation in EFL classrooms. The finding of the study implies that intelligibility as the goal of pronunciation teaching can be really attained with the consideration of priorities and techniques in pronunciation teaching.</p>

Improving English Pronunciation Teaching and Learning via Speech Corpora of Learners with Dialectal Backgrounds

Speech corpora play an important role in phonetic research and have been applied in daily life. Their application can be found in pronunciation teaching and learning. This article takes Jianghuai mandarin, a transitional dialect between northern and southern dialects in China, as an example to illustrate the necessity and procedures about the construction of an English speech corpus of learners with dialectal backgrounds. It shows that such corpus can be applied to help improve English pronunciation teaching and learning with its technical power in saving large audio data and its annotation with voice editing and analyzing software. It assists, when working together with Praat, to visually demonstrate spectrogram of similarities and differences between English and native language. It also functions to raise pronunciation awareness and help improve learners’ pronunciation. It is expected to be useful in stimulating teachers and learners to study pronunciation based on data analysis of physical features of recorded audio sound.

Pronunciation in EFL Instruction: A Research-based Approach

Jolanta Szpyra-Kozłowska’s book looks on the surface to be a much-needed addition to the largely neglected area of pronunciation teaching in the context of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). The publisher’s blurb claims the book addresses three key issues facing EFL teachers ‘in view of recent debates on the global spread of English and its international lingua franca role’: how to choose a pronunciation model, which pronunciation features to teach, and how to teach them. The book is divided into three sections. The first section, ‘English pronunciation teaching: global versus local contexts’, draws a distinction between the needs of students of English as a second language (ESL) and students of English as a foreign language (EFL). EFL students, Szpyra-Kozłowska rightly suggests, are more likely to use ELF and therefore their needs are different to ESL students. In an ESL context, students need to integrate within a given speech community and therefore may wish to use native speakers from that area as a model. Szpyra-Kozłowska (p. 9) gets to the heart of the issue, in my eyes, when she states that:

EFL Teachers’ Cognition of Teaching English Pronunciation Techniques: A Mixed-Method Approach

<p>In recent years, a great number of attempts have been made on teachers’ cognition with the aim of understanding the complications reinforcing the teachers’ cognitions and their classroom practices. Such studies shed light on how teachers’ cognitions expand over time and how they are reflected in their classroom practices. The aim of the present study was to investigate Iranian EFL teachers’ cognition particularly in terms of the pronunciation techniques they apply in the oral communication classrooms and their knowledge about their language learners’ characteristics. To achieve the goals of the study, the cognitions of five English teachers in the oral communication classrooms were explored. The teachers were requested to answer two semi-structured interviews to obtain the data about their cognitions regarding the pronunciation techniques. Furthermore, their students were asked to fill out a questionnaire to express their opinions about the techniques applied by their teachers during instruction of English pronunciation. The qualitative and quantitative results showed that there was an intricate relationship between language teachers’ experience with their cognitions about their language learners. Moreover, those teachers who were in higher level language courses showed to have broader cognitions about both the techniques they used in classrooms and the language learners’ characteristics as well.</p>

Development of an Intellegent Mobile Application for Teaching English Pronunciation

The paper describes the development of an intellegent mobile application that can be used in language learning specially in teaching English pronuciation using speech recognation engine in mobile devices. In this research study the originality of the developed application is that a speech recognition engine has been used on the mobile phone to recognize spoken words so that any pronunciation errors can easily be identified and then corrected. This feature of the apllication increases the motivation of the learner and make learning easier and more enjoyable than the traditional learning methods. The author hopes that the study outlined in the paper becomes a intelligent model for future researchers in foreign language education.

Advanced EFL Learners’ Beliefs about Pronunciation Teaching

<p class="apa">This paper explores EFL learners’ beliefs about English pronunciation teaching and aims to provide insights into current teaching practices of English pronunciation at both college and university levels. To this end, the study sought to elicit the beliefs of a group of 71 third- and fourth-year EFL learners majoring in English at a university college in Saudi Arabia about crucial aspects of pronunciation teaching. The study utilized a survey containing five-point Likert scale items as well as multiple-choice questions. Open-ended questions were also included in order to gain fuller understanding of students’ views. Data were thematically analyzed and consequently categorized into five major areas: course design, language of instruction, learning and teaching style, types of feedback, and nativeness of teachers. It was found that students in this study context are cognizant of the value of learning English pronunciation, and of what they find useful and less useful. Students also proved willing to help improve pronunciation instruction by providing helpful perspectives on the proper way, at least in their views, to present this sub-skill.</p>

PREDICTING THE PRONUNCIATION OF VOWEL DIGRAPHS AND IN ENGLISH

This research is pointed toward in describing the way to predict the pronunciation of vowel digraphs and and discovering the environment that affects the pronunciation of the vowel digraphs and . Descriptive research design was applied in this research. The data of the research were collected from Cambridge Advance Learner’s Dictionary – 3 rd Edition. Towards the end, the writer found that the vowel digraph can represent fourteen different vowel sound associations, they are [i:], [ɪə], [ae], [ɜ:], [e], [eə], [eɪ], [i.ə], [ieɪ], [ə], [i’ae], [α:], [i.ə] and [i]. Meanwhile, vowel digraph can stand for twelve different vowel sounds, they are [aʊ], [ɔ:], [aʊə], [u:], [ɜ:], [əʊ], [ə], [ʊ], [ae], [ɒ], [ʌ], and [ʊə]. At that time, the writer found six rule-patterns from the two vowel digraphs that have implication to the teaching of English pronunciation. Keywords : Pronunciation, Vowel, Digraph, Letters and Letters .

PERCEPTIONS OF THE SERIOUSNESS OF MISPRONUNCIATIONS OF ENGLISH SPEECH SOUNDS

The present study attempts to investigate Indonesian EFL teachers' and native English speakers' perceptions of mispronunciations of English sounds by Indonesian EFL learners. For this purpose, a paper-form questionnaire consisting of 32 target mispronunciations was distributed to Indonesian secondary school teachers of English and also to native English speakers. An analysis of the respondents' perceptions has discovered that 14 out of the 32 target mispronunciations are pedagogically significant in pronunciation instruction. A further analysis of the reasons for these major mispronunciations has reconfirmed the prevalence of interference of learners native language in their English pronunciation as a major cause of mispronunciations. It has also revealed Indonesian EFL teachers' tendency to overestimate the seriousness of their learners' pronunciations. Based on these findings, the study makes suggestions for better English pronunciation teaching in Indonesia or other EFL countries.

A Study of English Pronunciation Teaching for Korean University Students

The purpose of this study is to investigate the situation of English pronunciation teaching for Korean university students and to suggest some ideas for more effective teaching and learning of English pronunciation from the perspective of EIL (English as an International Language). This research is based on a survey of 110 Korean university students and the examination of instructional materials of 8 English teachers who have taught English conversation to the university students. The results revealed that whereas the students were aware of the importance of pronunciation education and had perceptions of English as an international language, pronunciation instruction was not implemented in the classroom properly and sufficiently. This study suggests that teachers need to recognize the functional change of English as an international language and redefine the goal and the method of pronunciation teaching. (Hoseo University)

The Myth of Reference Varieties in English Pronunciation across the Subcontinent, Egypt and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

The present study aims at exploring the differences in pronunciation more or less prevailing in the Indian Subcontinent and Arab world with a special focus on Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. The study identifies the most common factors that affect English pronunciation in general: (i) some phonemic differences that exist in L1 and English as a target language, (ii) Improper teaching and learning of English pronunciation. When non-native speakers of English exchange their ideas among themselves, their comprehension is to the maximum. But their pronunciation seems problematic in case the speaker or interlocutor is a native speaker. A test for the nationals of the lands included in the study was developed and administered to identify and specify the exact area(s) of pronunciation difficulties either consonants or vowels at segmental level of phonology. The analysis and conclusion of the test fully proved that English pronunciation is deeply influenced by the sound system of indigenous languages. As a matter of fact, English pronunciation of some non-native speakers, through their best possible efforts, may be closer to native speakers but not exactly like that of natives. The fact is that native and non-native differences in English pronunciation are unquestionable. Moreover, non-natives living in different areas (sometimes of the same community) also differ more or less in their pronunciation.

The Role of Secondary-Stressed and Unstressed-Unreduced Syllables in Word Recognition: Acoustic and Perceptual Studies with Russian Learners of English.

The importance of secondary-stressed (SS) and unstressed-unreduced (UU) syllable accuracy for spoken word recognition in English is as yet unclear. An acoustic study first investigated Russian learners' of English production of SS and UU syllables. Significant vowel quality and duration reductions in Russian-spoken SS and UU vowels were found, likely due to a transfer of native phonological features. Next, a cross-modal phonological priming technique combined with a lexical decision task assessed the effect of inaccurate SS and UU syllable productions on native American English listeners' speech processing. Inaccurate UU vowels led to significant inhibition of lexical access, while reduced SS vowels revealed less interference. The results have implications for understanding the role of SS and UU syllables for word recognition and English pronunciation instruction.

The Influence of Attention to Language Form on the Production of Weak Forms by Polish Learners of English

The paper discusses a study whose aim was to examine the impact of attention to language form and task type on the realisation of English function words by Polish learners of English. An additional goal was to investigate whether style-induced pronunciation shifts may depend on the degree of foreign accent. A large part of the paper concentrates on the issue of defining ‘weakness’ in English weak forms and considers priorities in English pronunciation teaching as far as the realisation of function words is concerned. The participants in the study were 12 advanced Polish learners of English, who were divided into two groups: 6 who were judged to speak with a slight degree of foreign accent and 6 who were judged to speak with a high degree of foreign accent. The subjects’ pronunciation was analysed in three situations in which we assume their attention was increasingly paid to speech form (spontaneous speech, prepared speech, reading). The results of the study suggest that increased attention to language form caused the participants to realise more function words as unstressed, although the effect was small. It was also found that one of the characteristics of English weak forms, the lack of stress, was realised correctly by the participants in the majority of cases. Finally, the results of the study imply that, in the case under investigation, the effect of attention to language form is weakly or not at all related to the degree of foreign accent.

The Influence of Chinese Stress on English Pronunciation Teaching and Learning

Stress is one of the key suprasegmentals in English sound system. It plays an important role in intelligibility and comprehensibility. However, stress often poses problems for Chinese EFL Learners. Chinese learners of English often misplace the stress in English words and sentences which subsequently may interrupt the flow of communication and lead to unintelligibility. Therefore, the correct placement of stress is a main concern in EFL speech intelligibility and training, and it is particularly important for Chinese learners of English because they have a drastically different stress system in their native language. There is evidence to suggest that the transfer of native language sound systems is one of the major reasons for foreign language pronunciation errors. This paper examines the differences between Chinese and English stress. Based on such contrastive analysis of English and Chinese stress, experiments are conducted to investigate the reasons for Chinese EFL learners’ pronunciation difficulties in English stress, and finally implications for English pronunciation teaching are drawn.

Learner Perspective on English Pronunciation Teaching in an EFL Context

This paper reports on an interview study with EFL learners that aimed to explore learners’ perceptions and views on English pronunciation teaching. The participants of the present study were ten EFL learners studying in the public educational system of Finland. Six of the participants were pupils attending basic education class nine, i.e. 15- to 16-year-old lower secondary level pupils. Two were primary level pupils attending basic education class four (aged 10), and two were upper secondary school pupils (aged 18). The interviews were thematic, and the learners were encouraged to speak freely about the English pronunciation teaching they were receiving and their opinions on this. In addition, they were asked to discuss their goals in English pronunciation, and to consider their pronunciation learning in class and out of class. The interviews were part of a wider study, mapping English pronunciation teaching practices in the context of Finnish schools. On the basis of the findings, the learners do not seem to have aspirations to native-like pronunciation, but rather aim at achieving intelligible and fluent speech. Only few reported an accent preference (British or American). The primary level learners expressed satisfaction with the amount of pronunciation teaching, whereas most of the lower and upper secondary level learners claimed that pronunciation teaching was insufficient. Despite their criticisms of their pronunciation teaching, the learners reported that they had learnt English pronunciation at school. In addition, many of the learners described learning pronunciation outside school, e.g. through media and personal encounters.