By Ana P. Biazon Rocha

PronSIG’s online conference, Global Perspectives on Pronunciation for Specific Purposes, took place on Saturday, 24 October 2026. Participants and speakers from different parts of the world shared and discussed the impact of pronunciation for specific purposes (PSP) in their current teaching (For a discussion on what PSP means, please check this previous blog post). In this post, we will go over key highlights from the conference plenaries. Be ready to be mind-blown!

On a personal note, the opening plenary with Heather Hansen, The Accent Ceiling: Preparing leaders to navigate the realities of global business communication, and the closing plenary with Vijay Ramjattan, Towards More Effective Counter-Listening to Workplace Accentism, completely blew up my little pronunciation teaching bubble! Not because everything I had previously believed was wrong, but because they made me realise the complexities and challenges of what we know as ‘intelligibility’.

Keeping the English for Specific Purposes (ESP) context in mind, here are some key highlights:

A. ‘Intelligibility is a VERB, not a noun’

In her opening plenary, Hansen challenged us to reconsider how we understand intelligibility. What really resonated with me was the idea: ‘Intelligibility is a verb, not a noun’. What does this mean? We tend to understand intelligibility through its ‘quality’ status: a speaker is intelligible or is not. However, Hansen explained that intelligibility does not exist in a vacuum. It is shaped by the interaction between speakers and listeners, their attitudes, experiences and expectations, as well as the context in which communication takes place.

Image 1: Heather Hansen’s Opening Plenary

She also reminded us that intelligibility, comprehensibility and accentedness are different, listener-focused dimensions rather than pronunciation-focused ones. In other words, a speaker may practise really hard and try their best to sound intelligible, but their listener’s perception is still going to be influenced by accent bias, stereotypes and familiarity with particular accents. It is not possible for the speaker to control or prevent that; it is part of the communication process (For further explanation on what intelligibility, comprehensibility and accentedness mean, please check this previous blog post).

To address this complexity, Hansen has developed the SPARR approach:

  • Systems: Understand the communication environment. What languages are spoken? Who communicates with whom? What are the workplace expectations?
  • Perceptions: Consider how listeners might perceive a speaker and how biases can influence understanding.
  • Adaptability: Develop the ability to adjust speaking styles when appropriate and when speakers choose to do so.
  • Recognition: Train our ears to recognise and understand a broader range of English accents.
  • Repair: Develop strategies for dealing with misunderstandings, such as rephrasing, clarifying and using written support.

In this sense, pronunciation teaching should not only help learners produce speech that others can understand, but also equip them with the skills to navigate real communication situations.

B. ‘Who gets to decide what is intelligible?’

In the closing plenary, Ramjattan took the discussion somewhere even more challenging by reminding us that pronunciation is not simply about linguistics, but also about politics, history, culture, identity and power. In particular, he explored workplace accentism: the discrimination people experience because of their accents. This can affect how their competence is perceived, their employment opportunities and even their professional progression.

Image 2: Vijay Ramjattan’s Closing Plenary

One of Ramjattan’s points made me stop and think: ‘Who gets to decide that a voice is intelligible?’ In other words, who has ownership of intelligibility? Intelligible for whom? According to which standards? If we focus exclusively on making speakers more intelligible, are we unintentionally reinforcing the idea that certain accents are the problem? Are we placing the responsibility for successful communication entirely on people whose voices are perceived as different?

Ramjattan also introduced the idea of counter-listening: moving beyond simply listening to unfamiliar accents as something to decode and learning to question our own listening practices and assumptions. He encouraged us to move from listening for intelligibility to creating it alongside others. To put it simply, successful communication should be a collective responsibility, not an individual speaker’s burden.

This is particularly important in ESP, where we prepare learners to participate in professional environments that may not always be as inclusive as we would like them to be.

C. So, what does this mean for our ESP lessons?

This is probably the question I have been thinking about most since the conference: How do we translate these ideas into classroom practice?

Here are three starting points:

1. Prepare speakers, but don’t forget listeners.

In a Business English lesson, for example, we might practise presenting figures, explaining a project or participating in meetings. We can certainly work on word stress, sentence stress, chunking and other pronunciation features that support understanding. To complement that, we should also work on listening skills. For example, we can provide learners with recordings of speakers with different English accents and ask them to identify key information, notice unfamiliar pronunciation features and discuss what helped (or prevented) them from understanding. The aim is not to train learners to understand every possible accent overnight, but to develop their confidence and flexibility as listeners (For further discussion on teaching pronunciation in Business English lessons, please check this previous blog post).

2. Make communication repair part of pronunciation teaching.

In professional contexts, misunderstandings happen, and what matters is knowing what to do next. Hansen emphasised the importance of practising clarification requests with students, such as:

  • Could you rephrase that, please?
  • Just to make sure I’ve understood correctly…
  • Do you mean…?
  • Let me put that another way.
  • Perhaps I could write that down for you.

We can also role-play meetings, telephone calls or client interactions where communication breaks down, and encourage learners to experiment with rephrasing, clarifying, slowing down and using alternative ways of conveying information.

3. Bring accent awareness and critical listening into the classroom.

When we make use of authentic recordings featuring speakers with different accents, we should not stop at comprehension questions, but also have students reflect on their reactions:

  • Which speakers did you find easiest to understand? Why?
  • Was it the pronunciation itself, your familiarity with the accent, the topic or perhaps your expectations about the speaker?

In addition, we can explore workplace scenarios, such as job interviews or international meetings, and discuss how accent bias might affect professional interactions. The goal is not simply to expose learners to different accents, but to help them become more aware of their own listening habits and assumptions.

D. A final thought

Honestly, I left these plenaries with more questions than answers, but I think that is a good thing. As pronunciation teachers, we might have traditionally spent a lot of time thinking about what speakers need to change to become more intelligible. However, these two talks reinforced the importance of considering what listeners, colleagues, employers and institutions need to change.

Pronunciation instruction still matters, and no one is denying that. Although helping learners develop the phonological resources and communication strategies they need in their professional lives is paramount, we should rethink where we place the responsibility for successful communication.

Maybe we should not only keep asking ourselves, How can I help my learners become more intelligible?, but also:

How can I help them create intelligibility with others, navigate accent bias and participate confidently without feeling that their voices need to sound like someone else’s?

That is quite a shift in perspective, and extremely worthy of further exploration, don’t you think? (For another critical perspective on intelligibility and pronunciation instruction, please check this previous blog post.)

A big thanks to Hansen and Ramjattan for the thought-provoking plenaries, and to all of those who made our PronSIG conference yet another successful event!

For more discussions, ideas and tips on how to teach pronunciation, our PronSIG blog is your reference! Don’t forget to leave your comments below and follow PronSIG on social media.