Тульский государственный педагогический университет им. Л.Н. Толстого

ELT Methodology course

Module handouts

Designed by Dr. Natalia Sokolova

Tula

2005

Pronunciation is often seen by both teachers and learners as an extremely complex area of language teaching. While it is generally recognised that a comprehensible pronunciation is both desirable and necessary, there is also much debate about what a ‘comprehensible pronunciation’ is and to what extent, if at all, teachers can influence this. There is also a grey area between the question of comprehensible pronunciation and that of comprehensible accent with, for example, a learner pronouncing a particular sound or sequence of sounds in a way that is demonstrably not a normal native-speaker variant but still comprehensible to the receiver of the message, and a learner pronouncing the same sound or sequence of sounds in a way which is demonstrably French or German. The latter case is often more acceptable to the native ear, largely because the native listener expects a French or a German speaker to have a French or German accent. A native-speaker with a strong Cornish accent might well find a Glaswegian less intelligible than an intermediate level French learner of English, but would be extremely unlikely to correct the former’s pronunciation, while probably feeling no such inhibition with the latter.

What is ‘acceptable pronunciation’?

In terms of what is ‘acceptable’ pronunciation, regional and dialectal variations are regarded as ‘acceptable’ whereas ‘foreign’ pronunciation often may not be sub-titled. For better or worse, the native speaker is perceived as correct, simply by virtue of being a native-speaker, even if much of his/her speech is unintelligible. The foreign learner is not accorded such privileges, and the listener may often lose patience with attempts to produce an utterance with intelligible pronunciation. Thus, while it is entirely possible that in the age of cable TV and IT in the not-far-too-distant future Bremen English and Bologna English may be regarded simply as regional accents in much the same way as Bolton English or Bristol English, this moment is not yet with us and foreign pronunciation is often regarded as a non-standard variety that could and perhaps should be improved.

MIND that it is called NON-STANDARD but not ‘wrong’, ‘inappropriate’, ‘unacceptable’ or something of that kind

Despite the factors outlined above, it is often argued that pronunciation is of little importance when placed alongside, for example, grammar and vocabulary. Errors of pronunciation are hardly worth correcting, particularly if the utterance is broadly comprehensible. Interestingly, the same criterion is not usually applied by teachers to grammatical or lexical errors – if a word, for example, is ‘broadly comprehensible’ but not correct, then teachers are likely to correct it. Similarly, if the use of a grammatical structure by a learner can be understood but contains errors, then, once again, it is likely to be corrected. Pronunciation errors are more likely to remain uncorrected.