Should We Teach Pronunciation Explicitly in L2/EFL Classrooms?

Year 2018, Volume: 5 Issue: 2, 95 - 102, 20.12.2018

Cihat Atar

https://doi.org/10.33200/ijcer.486044

Cited By: 1

Abstract

The aim of this study is to discuss whether explicit teaching of English
pronunciation in second language (L2) and English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms
is helpful for learners or not. This study aims to review the studies on
pronunciation teaching to synthesize the literature. In this way, connections
between research and practice will be formed and the implications for language
teaching will be mentioned. In this study, a literature review (of around 40 articles,
books and book chapters) has been done first and then, in accordance with the
findings, the emerging themes (e.g. intelligibility, Lingua Franca Core and
students’ background) from the review were further reviewed and a synthesis is
provided taking the findings regarding different perspectives into
consideration. The results suggest that recently pronunciation teaching has
shown great improvements and the aims of it have changed from attaining a
native-like proficiency to being intelligible. The review suggests that the aim
of pronunciation teaching should be to teach for functional and meaningful
contexts and it should be a part of communicative approaches to provide
students with a fluent speech. The findings also suggest that the focus in explicit
pronunciation teaching should be on not only perception, but also production
and only the relevant and useful parts of phonology should be taught to
learners.

Keywords

Pronunciation, English as an L2, Lingua Franca Core, Teaching pronunciation

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