by Ana Paula Biazon Rocha
The three plenary talks at the Voices in Harmony conference in Ankara (16-17 May 2025) were incredible opportunities to explore, reflect on and share current perspectives in pronunciation research and teaching in the 21st century. Tracey Derwing, John Levis and Sinem Sonsaat-Hegelheimer each took us on a journey through pronunciation, reinforcing its essential role at the heart of language teaching and learning. Since this blog is all about supporting teachers to teach pronunciation confidently, regularly and systematically in their lessons, this post focuses on the key insights from John Levis’ plenary talk, ‘Why Suprasegmentals are Important for Pronunciation Teaching and Learning?’ If we truly want to support our students in becoming more effective communicators in English, our pronunciation teaching should include suprasegmentals, such as stress, rhythm, prominence and intonation. Honestly, choosing just one plenary to summarise was no easy task, I would love to cover all three! But that would turn this into a blog chapter rather than a blog post (tempting, but not quite practical… at least for now!).
‘Why Suprasegmentals are Important for Pronunciation Teaching and Learning?’
Image 1. John Levis’ plenary talk
John Levis is one of the leading researchers and experts in pronunciation teaching. In his work (2005, 2018, 2022), he has consistently argued that the intelligibility principle, not the nativeness principle, should guide pronunciation instruction. In other words, rather than aiming for learners to sound like native speakers, pronunciation teaching should focus on intelligibility, which means helping students communicate clearly and effectively in real-life situations, across a range of contexts and needs. Similarly, he has always advocated for the paramount importance of suprasegmentals in effective pronunciation teaching.
His sixty-minute plenary talk in Ankara can be divided into four main parts:
A. Why do we teach pronunciation?
Nothing like starting from the beginning, right? Levis outlined three fundamental reasons why we teach pronunciation:
- ‘pronunciation can affect intelligibility in speaking and listening’
- ‘pronunciation is an unavoidable part of the L2 face we present to others’
- ‘pronunciation teaching works!’.
Maybe we pronunciation teachers should tattoo these three reasons somewhere visible, so the next time someone questions the value of pronunciation instruction, we can just point to them! All jokes aside, this shows that pronunciation is not just a finishing touch: it plays a vital role in how learners are understood, how they are perceived and how well they succeed in real communication.
Levis also added that when you teach pronunciation, students do learn it, something we cannot always say about other areas of language.
B. What does pronunciation teaching include?
As highlighted in a previous blog post, pronunciation features are usually divided into segmentals, such as vowels and consonants, and suprasegmentals, namely stress, rhythm, prominence and intonation. On the one hand, segmentals:
- impact accentedness and comprehensibility
- affect word intelligibility (e.g., ‘right’ instead of ‘light’)
- focus on errors (e.g., pronouncing /e/ in ‘bad’ instead of /æ/)
- connect with spelling (e.g., pronouncing the s in ‘island’, which is silent).
On the other hand, suprasegmentals:
- also impact accentedness and comprehensibility
- influence word and phrase intelligibility (e.g., pronouncing /ˈwɒt ˈduː juː ˈmiːn/, all words stressed equally, instead of /ˈwɒʔdjə ˈmiːn/ or /wɒdʒə ˈmiːn/, with reduced forms and connected speech)
- show variations in meaning (e.g., contrastive stress: I love you vs. I LOVE you vs. I love YOU)
- connect directly to fluency and communication.
To put it simply, suprasegmentals help show how a message is structured, ‘how it fits together’, in Levis’ words. It is through understanding these patterns that real communication happens.
C. Suprasegmentals – The Final Frontier
Image 2. John Levis highlights the four main suprasegmental features
Through a Star Wars analogy, ‘The Final Frontier’, Levis highlighted the four main suprasegmental features that we should integrate into our pronunciation teaching. In order to better understand how we can refer to them in the classroom, let’s use the script of a TED Talk, ‘Matt Cutts: Try something new for 30 days’, as an example. We will focus on the first thirty seconds of the video. Here is a free lesson plan based on it, but remember to add more pronunciation practice to it!
1. Word stress: In English, words are made up of syllables, and one of those syllables is usually stressed, pronounced more strongly, while the others are unstressed or weaker. For example:
RUT – HAbit – phiLOSopher
Levis explained that stress errors can often lead to a loss of intelligibility, but not always. When it comes to teaching, he noted that using rules for suffixes and prefixes tends to be effective (e.g., -TION suffix, stress on the syllable before the suffix: communiCAtion, faciliTAtion, globaliZAtion), as does incorporating movement, to help learners feel and internalise stress patterns (e.g., check our very first blog post about using your hands to teach pronunciation).
2. Rhythm: English typically alternates between strong and weak syllables. This is frequently introduced to students by distinguishing between content words, which carry meaning, and function words, which provide grammatical structure but do not convey meaning. For example (content words are highlighted in cyan and function words are highlighted in pink):
According to Levis, unfamiliar rhythm makes speech harder for listeners to process, while improved rhythm can significantly increase intelligibility. Since learners are usually influenced by the rhythmic patterns of their first language, it is essential to teach how rhythm works in English and provide opportunities for practice. Levis also commented that research highlights the importance of teaching rhythm, particularly for improving comprehension of connected speech.
3. Prominence: Also known as nuclear stress, tonic stress or sentence stress, prominence refers to the idea that in every sentence in English, one word (or group of words) receives the main stress. This is usually found toward the end of the sentence and highlights the most important part of the message, that is, the word that carries the sentence’s core meaning. For example (the words highlighted in yellow represent the nuclear stress):
Levis reminded us that prominence is crucial for L1 and L2 listeners because it helps them identify the most important information in a sentence. It can be taught successfully through explicit instruction by drawing learners’ attention to where the main stress falls and why. For further ideas on this, check this previous blog post.
4. Intonation: In Levis’ words, intonation is about ‘pitch moves at the edges’ or ‘what happens after the stressed word in a sentence’. This means that intonation reflects how the pitch rises or falls at the end of phrases or sentences. For example:
Pitch movements signal elements such as the speaker’s intent, emotion or whether a statement is complete or a question is being asked. Understanding these movements is key to interpreting meaning beyond the individual words. Thus, intonation is vital for both intelligibility and comprehensibility. Levis recommended teaching it explicitly, just like word stress, rhythm and prominence. For more on intonation, check this previous blog post.
D. Are suprasegmentals taught in the classroom?
Levis explained that historically, suprasegmentals were taught. During the 1980s, they played a key role in the revitalisation of pronunciation as a field. However, today they tend to receive less attention in the classroom, often because segmentals are seen as easier to explain and are typically taught first. Many teachers also lack adequate training, confidence and skills to effectively incorporate suprasegmentals into their lessons. In addition, Levis commented that misinterpretations of the Lingua Franca Core (Jenkins, 2000), along with some ambiguities in how it was originally presented, may have led some teachers and experts to downplay or avoid suprasegmentals altogether.
That’s why he concluded his plenary talk by inviting us teachers to change this reality and not shy away from teaching suprasegmentals anymore:
- ‘they are essential for effective pronunciation teaching’
- ‘they deserve valuable teacher and learner time’
- ‘teaching them will improve communication’.
Shall we tattoo these too?
Image 3. John Levis invites teachers to teach suprasegmentals more often in their lessons
Hopefully, these key takeaways from Levis’ plenary talk will help you feel more inspired to give suprasegmentals the attention they deserve in your lessons: your learner’s intelligibility and comprehensibility are on the line!
For more discussions, ideas and tips on how to teach pronunciation, please check previous posts here. Don’t forget to leave your comments below and follow PronSIG on social media.
References
Jenkins, J. (2000). The Phonology of English as an International Language. Oxford University Press.
Levis, J. M. (2005). Changing contexts and shifting paradigms in pronunciation Teaching. TESOL Quarterly, 39(3), 369–377.
Levis, J. (2018). Intelligibility, Oral Communication, and the Teaching of Pronunciation. Cambridge University Press.
Levis, J., Derwing, T., & Sonsaat-Hegelheimer, S. (2022). Second Language Pronunciation. Bridging the Gap Between Research and Teaching. Wiley Blackwell.
