6.4
Pronunciation
6.4.1
Should pronunciation be taught?
Activity 8
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Before tackling this section, consider for a moment how you yourself learnt pronunciation in your first foreign language. Was it taught formally in class? If so, how? Do you do anything differently in your own teaching? For students whose course includes a period of residence abroad, do you think it adequate to depend exclusively on TL exposure for pronunciation improvement? What do you think about the claim that many students simply cannot be taught pronunciation? |
To a certain extent, the teaching of pronunciation will depend on existing curricular structures in your institution. It may be that pronunciation skills are taught separately in specially earmarked language laboratory sessions. This makes sense as pronunciation practice lends itself particularly to listen-and-repeat style drills, with external monitoring.
If this is not the case in your institution, then it is useful to spend some class time working on pronunciation. It is tempting to leave it to chance and the year abroad, especially when there are so many other constraints on class time. However, it should be borne in mind that some joint / combined honours students, and most IWLP learners, may not spend much time in the TL country. In any case, not everyone is fortunate enough to have the sort of highly-tuned ear that naturally picks up foreign pronunciation. For many learners it requires hard work, so some class time should be devoted to pronunciation tasks, if only to demonstrate to students how they may better practise on their own.
