Should We Teach Pronunciation Explicitly in L2/EFL Classrooms?

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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