by Ana P. Biazon Rocha and IATEFL PronSIG committee members

Despite its vital role in communication, pronunciation usually receives relatively little attention in teacher education. Many novice teachers tend to feel unprepared to teach it, while others may quietly skip the pronunciation activities in their coursebooks altogether (Levis, Derwing & Sonsaat-Hegelheimer, 2022; Walker, Low & Setter, 2021). To help novice teachers tackle pronunciation teaching with confidence, I asked my fellow PronSIG committee members, who train and mentor new teachers daily, to share their knowledge and experience and help me write this post. Interestingly, although their answers come from different countries and teaching contexts, the overlap is striking. Here are some of the key points:

1. Confidence, not knowledge, is commonly a major hurdle

When thinking about the challenges novice teachers face, all of us have mentioned confidence. Many teachers simply do not believe they know enough. While native-speaker teachers of English may use pronunciation intuitively but struggle to explain it, non-native teachers frequently worry that they are not qualified to teach pronunciation because English is not their first language (‘I’ve been there, done that, bought the T-shirt!’). Others have received very little formal training and feel they are ‘making it up’ as they go along (For further discussion about how non-native speakers of English tend to feel, check this previous blog post).

As mentioned above, pronunciation is usually overlooked during initial teacher education, leaving new teachers without the frameworks or terminology they need. Perhaps the most reassuring message from our committee members is: you do not need to know everything before you start teaching pronunciation. As one of them puts it, ‘using pronunciation dictionaries or online resources is not cheating, it is good teaching’.

2. Intelligibility, not perfection, is what really matters

All of us also wholeheartedly agree that the goal of pronunciation instruction is not accent reduction but successful communication. Intelligibility, comprehensibility and learner confidence are far more relevant than achieving a particular native-speaker model. We also challenge the idea that there is only one ‘correct’ pronunciation. Nowadays, most of our learners interact with speakers from across the world, encounter multiple accents online and frequently need English for international communication rather than imitation of a single prestige variety. One of our committee members emphasises a reminder worth repeating: ‘accent is identity, and identity is delicate’.

Thus, instead of trying to erase that identity, pronunciation teaching should help learners communicate clearly while respecting who they are (For more information on how to teach pronunciation communicatively, check this previous blog post).

3. Pronunciation deserves a regular place in every lesson

Another simple and clear message we want to share is Don’t skip pronunciation. In several instances, many novice (and experienced?) teachers tend to treat pronunciation as an optional extra or only correct errors when they happen. Instead, we recommend integrating pronunciation into everyday teaching.

Practical suggestions by our committee members include:

  • planning short pronunciation stages rather than waiting for problems to appear;
  • contrasting citation forms with connected speech;
  • encouraging learners to notice pronunciation patterns;
  • using authentic audio from podcasts, interviews, films and YouTube;
  • incorporating shadowing, repetition, chants, poems and tongue twisters;
  • making time for focused drilling when it serves a clear purpose.

Far from being old-fashioned, drills can still be a valuable teaching tool, provided they are purposeful and not overused. As one of our members points out, learners rarely complain about receiving too much pronunciation practice (For tips and ideas on how to drill pronunciation with learners, check this previous blog post).

4. New teachers need principles as much as techniques

We all believe that novice teachers benefit from a clear conceptual framework: understanding the relationship between sounds, syllables, stress, connected speech and prosody before worrying about individual activities. In other words, it is worth spending some time on discussing mindset as well as classroom activities.

We also encourage teachers to stay curious. If a learner pronounces a word differently, it does not necessarily mean that it is wrong. It may reflect another legitimate variety of English, for example. Similarly, students have different pronunciation goals depending on their professional, academic or personal contexts.

Thus, the recurring message is that pronunciation teaching is about making informed decisions rather than enforcing strict rules.

5. Confidence grows through teaching, not before it

As for one final piece of advice, all of our answers varied in wording but shared the same spirit:

  • Prepare your lessons.
  • Use reliable resources.
  • Listen to your learners.
  • Keep studying.
  • Most importantly, teach pronunciation anyway.
  • Confidence grows through practice, not before it.

One of our members summed it up beautifully: ‘Read a lot and keep studying, but don’t try to have all the answers’.

In a nutshell…

As mentioned previously, even though each of us approaches pronunciation from a slightly different perspective, several key ideas are recurrent:

  • Pronunciation deserves much more attention in teacher education.
  • The aim is intelligibility and confidence, not accent perfection.
  • Learners benefit from regular, planned pronunciation work.
  • Teachers do not need to be perfect pronunciation experts (who is?) to teach effectively.
  • Curiosity, preparation and empathy matter as much as technical knowledge.

Possibly, that’s the most encouraging message for anyone teaching pronunciation for the first time: You do not have to be the world’s leading expert. You simply have to be willing to help your learners speak a little more clearly, listen a little more carefully and communicate a little more confidently.

Hopefully, all of us teachers (novice AND experienced) will find this post useful and/or may go back to it from time to time. Pronunciation teaching rules, and we can do it!

Many thanks to our wonderful committee members for this collaboration. If you are not an IATEFL PronSIG member, no time like the present. Join us!

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

References

Levis, J., Derwing, T. & Sonsaat-Hegelheimer, S. (2022). Second Language Pronunciation. Bridging the Gap Between Research and Teaching. Wiley Blackwell.

Walker, R., Low, E., & Setter, J. (2021). English pronunciation for a global world [PDF]. Oxford University Press. www.oup.com/elt/expert