Teaching Pronunciation In ESL

2.3. Review of Pronunciation Teaching Research

This section elaborates teaching pronunciation in ESL and EFL contexts. It discusses also the role of explicit pronunciation teaching on learners’ developments. It demonstrates the segmental and surasegmental features of teaching pronunciation, and how teaching pronunciation can be involved in communicative language teaching. Finally, it explains the factors that may affect the pronunciation teaching.

2.3.1. Teaching Pronunciation in ESL/ EFL Contexts

Teaching English language as a second language (ESL) or as a foreign language (EFL) requires the teachers to concentrate on all language skills including communicative skills. Nevertheless, English pronunciation teaching is still neglected in ESL/

(1998) compared the implementation of three types of pronunciation instruction (segmental accuracy, general speaking habits and prosodic features, or no specific pronunciation instruction). They examined the impact of these three types of instruction on the speech of English learners in a Canadian ESL program. They asked the learners to read sentence-length utterances as well as to produce extemporaneous narratives. They concluded that all three groups improved in terms of accentedness, but only the segmental and prosodic groups improved in comprehensibility in a sentence task with the results for the segmental group being significantly greater than those of the other two groups. However, only the prosodic group exhibited considerable improvement in both comprehensibility and fluency in narrative tasks. This study indicates that explicit pronunciation can lead to improvements in EFL/ ESL learners’ speech as discussed in the next

(2016). They helped participating EFL learners to identify and notice their specific pronunciation errors and then they investigated the effect of explicit pronunciation instruction on their vowel perception. The findings revealed that explicit vowel instruction through raising learners’ awareness or consciousness was more effective than implicit teaching of vowels. They contended that formal explicit instruction of the L2 phonology should not be underestimated. Similarly, Saito (2007) conducted a study that explored whether explicit phonetic instruction would improve Japanese EFL learners’ pronunciation of the vowel /æ/. He found that three of the four participants in the experimental group showed significant improvement in pronouncing this vowel both immediately following instruction and one week later whereas the control group showed no improvement. Consequently, explicit pronunciation instruction had led to decrease phonological errors. In a later study, Saito (2011) investigated the role of explicit phonetic instruction as an independent variable on two aspects of L2 pronunciation development: comprehensibility and perceived accentedness by conducting a quasi-experimental study with twenty Japanese EFL learners. The comprehensibility and perceived foreign accent of the participants’ oral production in English were evaluated by four experienced NS listeners. The results showed that