Pronunciation is an area in teaching that could be quite
demanding. This area in English language teaching has evolved as a very
significant component over the years. English pronunciation could prove to be
quite confusing not only for language learners but also the teachers. If we
have a closer look at what this topic entails then one would find that it is
vast.
In the past amount of time given to pronunciation in
language teaching was almost negligible. In the recent years with English
becoming a global language this area has gained more prominence than expected. Now
days though we talk about the importance of pronunciation but still the
approach towards teaching it is more theoretical than practical as we can see
in many countries. There could be several reasons accrued to this particular
approach. One of the major reasons is that
sometimes it is difficult to assess where to begin and where to end- hence it
is daunting to know what exactly should incorporated in a particular lesson.
This problem is further aggravated for the simple reason that English is not
only spoken by native speakers but by the speakers of other languages all over
the world.
Often it is found
that learners think that pronunciation can help them to speak like a British or
American. As a language teacher it is important to make learners aware of the
importance of pronunciation in terms of tangibility. One cannot over look or
ignore the fact that there is a considerable difference between a learner’s
mother tongue and English, moreover there are various areas for example:
assimilation and elision which comes naturally to a native speaker but is quite
difficult for a non-native speaker to acquire.
Students should be given choice while they are learning
English so that they can use it in international contexts with other non-native
speakers from different first languages- they should be given the choice of
acquiring a pronunciation that is more relevant to EIL intelligibility rather than
what traditional pronunciation syllabuses offer. Up to now, the goal of
pronunciation teaching has been to enable students to acquire an accent that is
as close as possible to that of a native speaker. But for EIL communication,
this is not the most intelligible accent and some of the non-core items may
even make them less intelligible to another non-native speaker.
The non-core items are not only unimportant for
intelligibility but also socially more appropriate. After all, native speakers
have different accents depending on the region where they were born and live.
So, why should non-native speakers of an international language not be allowed
to do the same?
Finally, students should be given plenty of exposure in
their pronunciation classrooms to other non-native accents of English so that
they can understand them easily even if a speaker has not yet managed to
acquire the core features. For EIL, this is much more important than having
classroom exposure to native speaker accents.
Ref: Jennifer Jenkins, lecturer in Sociolinguistics and Phonology at
King's College, London
First published in
2002
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