What is your stance in teaching English pronunciation when English is now considered an international language?

English language has taken pain the up and down from dust to glory since it came into sight in Beowulf, Chaucer Canterbury Tales, and Shakespeare’s works until J. K. Rowling’s. The fluctuations of political, social events; the cataclysm of The Black Death (1346-1353); the changes of ecclesiastic aspects; the assimilation of other cultures from the Roman Occupation (43-410 CE), the Germanic Settlements (from around late 400s), the Viking Invasions (787-1000s), and the Norman Invasions (1000s-1154); the Renaissance Mixing (1400s-1600s), the Empire Imports (100s-present) have significant roles to play in shaping the English language as what we have at the present time. The body of the English language has faithfully reflected the country’s alternation from inferior to superior status. It was initially influenced by the outside world in every aspect of life then its status was recognised to have influenced the world since Britain was ‘the empire on which the sun never sets’ (see Baugh and Cable, 1991; Algeo, 2010).

As English is now considered as an international language (Crystal, 2003) or as a lingua franca (see Jenkin & Leung, 2017), teaching and learning English has never been so omnipresent before. With its diverse features from itself and from the influences it received from many other languages all over the world, teaching and learning English should be seriously considered initially by teachers. One of the issues should be mindful of is pronunciation teaching. The importance of pronunciation teaching can be obviously seen from the significant roles of good pronunciation in students’ communicative competence and performance (Gilakjani, 2012). In his study, Gilakjani (op.cit.) also emphasises that “limited pronunciation skills can decrease learners’ self-confidence, restrict social interactions, and negatively affect estimations of the speaker’s credibility and abilities”.

In order to teach English pronunciation effectively, it is suggested that teachers need to basically have the knowledge of phonetics and phonology (Nunan, 2015). In order words, teachers at least need to equip themselves features of pronunciation. The two main features of pronunciation mentioned in Roach (2000) are segmental features and supra-segmental ones. While the former is at the micro level and deals with phonemes (sounds including consonants and vowels), the latter is at the macro level and deals with linking, intonation, and stress (involving word stress and sentence stress) (Roach, op.cit.). Moreover, factors that impact English pronunciation learning in a particular context should also be taken into consideration. In his research, Gilakjani (op.cit.) has proposed four primary factors that affect students’ English Pronunciation learning as well as pronunciation performance: attitude (see Kara, 2009), motivation (see Gardner, 1985), instruction (Tanner, 2008), and exposure to target language (see Ahmadi, 2011). Tanner (op.cit.) also affirms the correlation of cultural sensitivity and the development of students’ English pronunciation proficiency. Mother tongue, according to Ahmadi (op.cit.), has certain roles to play in the target language’s pronunciation learning. This holds true when it comes to English sounds that do not exist in first language, e.g. Vietnamese learners may find difficult to produce /θ/, /ð/, to name just a few, due to the absence of these sounds in Vietnamese. Those discrepancies could hinder the learners’ pronunciation advancement as well as their pronunciation performance. As a result, students’ communicative ability is also radically affected due to lacking of confidence and difficulties in recognising words spoken by others.

It is due to the fact that teaching pronunciation is well connected to students’ language capability and language use, the integration of pronunciation into the curriculum is virtually indispensable (Gilakjani, op.cit.). The ideas of sound structures should be acknowledged by the teacher (Gilakjani, op.cit.) so that he/she would know well what to do with the students in a certain phase of pronunciation practice. What’s more, teacher’s observation should also be conducted to draw out what sounds would be difficult for learners to produce (Gilakjani, op.cit.). This would become a great help for students to be supported by the instructors in shaping good pronunciation during the time of learning so that intelligibility, comprehensibility, and interpretability would be likely achieved by the learners of English (Burns, 2003). While the first one means sounds produced have to be recognisable by the listeners, the second and the third are respectively indicated that the meaning and the purpose of the utterances should be understood by the listeners.

From my perspective, as an English teacher, I am in agreement with Gilakjani (op.cit.) that teachers should devote time and effort in observation and figure out the specific sounds which would be problematic amongst a group of learners in a particular context. Also, teachers should help learners realise the prosodical features of pronunciation aspects of the target language. Likewise, as stated above, English is influenced from other languages, the pronunciation of those borrowing words may be quite different, e.g. pizza /ˈpiːtsə / is probably one of the words pronounced wrong by most of Vietnamese students or even teachers if they do not pay enough attention to the difference (it could be pronounced /ˈpiːzə / or /ˈpɪzə/) since it was first used in Britain from Italian pizza in around 1935 to mean ‘cake, tart, pie’ of uncertain origin (Cited in Etymology online: www.etymonline.com).

In conclusion, in my personal point of view, teaching English pronunciation is an integral part of English language teaching. Therefore, more quantitative and qualitative research on how to improve students’ pronunciation ability is needed, especially in the specific contexts of Vietnam. Teachers of English should acknowledge the significant roles of pronunciation in improving students’ communicative competency and performance to be well-prepared in terms of knowledge involved and proposing feasible strategies in promoting learners’ pronunciation accomplishment.

REFERENCES

 

[1]         Ahmadi, M. (2011). Why is Pronunciation so difficult to learn? English Language Teaching, 4(3), 74-83.

[2]         Algeo, J. (2010). The Origins and Development of the English Language. Sixth Edition. Boston, MA: WADSWORTH Cengage Learning.

[3]         Baugh, A. C. & Cable, T. (1991). A History of the English Language. Third Edition. Great Britain. Routledge.

[4]         Crystal, D. (2003). English as a Global Language. Second Edition. NY: Cambridge University Press.

[5]         Gardner, R. C. (1985). Social Psychology and Second Language Learning: The Role of Attitudes and Motivation. London: Edward Arnold Publishers.

[6]         Gilakjani, A. P. (2012). A study of Factors Affecting EFL Learners’ English Pronunciation Learning and the Strategies for Instruction. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 2(3). 119-128.

[7]         Jenkin, J. & Leung, C. (2017). Assessing English as a Lingua Franca. In E Shohamy et al. (eds.), Language Testing and Assessment, Encyclopaedia of Language and Education. Springer International Publishing.

[8]         Kara, A. (2009). The Effect of a ‘Learning Theories’ Unit on Students’ Attitudes towards Learning. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 34(3), 100-113.

[9]         Nunan, D. (2015). Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages – An Introduction. NY: Routledge.

[10]     Roach, P. (2000). English Phonetics and Phonology. Third Edition. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. UK.

[11]     Tanner, J. D. (2008). Factors Affecting the Acquisition of Pronunciation: Culture, Motivation, and Level of Instruction. All theses and Dissertations, 3242.