Essay On Teaching Pronunciation

A very limited amount of research is available in the area of teaching pronunciation, and even less includes the experiences of teachers and students Pawlak et al. (2015). The problem with teaching pronunciation is not as simple as it seems. It is easily said that pronunciation is something that is very effectively taught implicitly, but what happens if the implicit methods are just not enough for the learner to achieve a satisfying level of general language proficiency? Pronunciation can be analysed and taught independently through its suprasegmental and segmental aspects, and it can be taught through suprasegmental and segmental features separately. The dilemma at hand is whether the suprasegmental or segmental level is more important to be focusing on in order to achieve the best possible results. Another

(2015), research conserning attitude towards pronunciation learning and teaching is very limited, but from what is available it can be concluded that there are different attitudes toward pronunciation teaching, and they vary from country to country. According to Tergujeff (2012), who stated the Finnish example of current attitude toward pronunciation teaching is that it is generaly not supported by the textbooks which poses a great deal of problems to teachers because they have to rely on do-it-yourself method in order to offer a proper pronunciation lecture. From Henderson’s (2013) presentation of the general preliminary results of the EPTiES survey, the teachers’ general opinion on the teacher training in the field of teaching pronunciation is that they are largely dissatisfied with their level of training. More than half of the respondents expressed dissatisfaction, and more than 20 % rated their training as “extremely poor”. This shows that the problem of lack of interest for research and the lack of pronunciation teaching in schools stems from the colleges which are not producing teachers capable of teaching