Alice Henderson

The English Pronunciation Teaching in Europe Survey: Factors inside and outside the Classroom

In the past two decades, a number of studies have looked at how English pronunciation is taught, focusing on teaching practices, materials, training and attitudes to native speaker models from both the teachers’ and the learners’ perspective. Most of these studies have been conducted in English-speaking countries such as the USA (Murphy, 1997), Great Britain (Bradford and Kenworthy, 1991; Burgess and Spencer, 2000), Canada (Breitkreutz, Derwing and Rossiter, 2001; Foote, Holtby and Derwing, 2011), Ireland (Murphy, 2011) and Australia (Couper, 2011; Macdonald, 2002). In Europe, pronunciation teaching has been studied in Spain (Walker, 1999) and, more recently, in Finland (Tergujeff, 2012, 2013a, b). Work has also looked at attitudes towards native speaker models and the degree of success in reaching the model, for example, in Poland (Nowacka, 2010; Waniek-Klimczak, 2002;Waniek-Klimczak and Klimczak, 2005), Serbia (Paunovic, 2009) and Bulgaria (Dimitrova and Chernogorova, 2012). In Finland, Lintunen (2004) and Tergujeff, Ullakonoja and Dufva (2011) focused on learners, not teachers, but both studies included a survey section exploring methods in English pronunciation teaching.

The English Pronunciation Teaching in Europe Survey: Initial Results and Useful Insights for Collaborative Work

The English Pronunciation Teaching in Europe Survey (EPTiES) is an on-line survey which aims to collect information about English pronunciation teaching practices in European countries, following the work of Canadian (Breitkreutz et al, TESL Can J, 19:51–61, 2002) and Australian (Macdonald, Prospect 17(3):3–18, 2002) studies. Jointly prepared by teachers in ten European countries (Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Macedonia, The Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland), the survey has 57 questions organised into nine categories. Initial results for 598 respondents are briefly presented in relation to six categories: characteristics of participants (e.g. age, gender, years teaching experience); teachers’ self-evaluation of their own pronunciation skills; teachers’ views on the pronunciation-related training they received; assessment of pronunciation; exposure outside the classroom (e.g. subtitled TV, live interaction with native and non-native speakers,); varieties and norms inside the classroom (e.g. for receptive and productive work). Some of the advantages and drawbacks of such collaborative research projects are also addressed.

Desperately Seeking a Communicative Approach: English Pronunciation in a Sample of French and Polish Secondary School Textbooks

Abstract This paper compares the treatment of English pronunciation in school textbooks from France and Poland, in order to see what resources teachers have at their disposal. It is limited to textbooks used at the secondary level of each education system. Recent research has shown that European teachers do not find teaching English pronunciation easy and that many are unsatisfied with their training in relation to teaching pronunciation (Bradford & Kenworthy 1991; Burgess and Spencer 2000; Henderson et al. 2012; Frost and Henderson, 2013; Iivonen, 2005). Textbooks are a widespread resource with the potential to alleviate a lack of extensive pedagogical training. The first part of this paper analyses pronunciation exercises in a representative sample of textbooks from each country. Pronunciation exercises were classified based on the degree to which they mobilize communicative abilities, according to the five categories of a Communicative Framework for teaching pronunciation (Celce-Murcia et al., 2010, p45): Description & analysis, Listening discrimination, Controlled practice, Guided practice, Communicative practice. The first category involves little risk-taking by the learner, usually focusses on form and allows little freedom. At the other end of the spectrum, communicative practice involves a focus on meaning and interaction, with the concomitant greater freedom to make mistakes. The exercises were then analysed to see which segmental and/or prosodic features they favoured and to what extent.

Takes Two to Tango: Research into Accent, Comprehensibility and Intelligibility and the Implications for CLIL

Varieties of English abound and students need to understand them, but research is still attempting to determine which features make a given accent easier or more difficult to understand. To that end, the constructs of accent, comprehensibility and intelligibility have been the subject of research in relation to, among others: fluency (Derwing et al. 2009; Cucchiarini 2000; Kormos and Denes 2004); assessment of listening and speaking (Major et al. 2002; Tauroza and Luk 1997); and prosodic features’ influence on speech segmentation (Cutler in Cognitive models of speech processing: psycholinguistic and computational perspectives. MIT, Cambridge, 1990). Studies with immigrant populations in the North American context of English as a Second Language (e.g. Munro and Derwing 1995; Derwing and Munro 2001, TESOL 2005) show that researchers are trying to operationalize these three concepts, in order to help instructors better define their learners’ needs within such settings. This chapter argues that the body of research into these three concepts, including experimental and descriptive studies, holds crucial insights for Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). Similarly to bilingual education, CLIL is becoming more widespread in Europe under the impulse of the Bologna process. The corresponding increase in the number of non-native speakers of English teaching field-specific content in English highlights the importance of the interplay between the principles and goals of CLIL and three constructs: accent, comprehensibility and intelligibility. This chapter explores the main findings of studies into these three constructs in order to address one of the main challenges of CLIL: communicating field-specific content via effective, comprehensible language.

Smoothie or Fruit Salad? Learners’ Descriptions of Accents as Windows to Concept Formation

Abstract This paper explores the linguistically naive descriptions which one set of EFL learners provided when identifying and describing accents. First and second-year English majors at a French university were asked to do two tasks. First, they listened to two extracts to determine whether the speaker’s accent sounded more British or American, and to explain which features helped them to decide. Later they answered two questions: a) What do you do when you want to sound more like an American? and b) more like a British person? The analysis of their answers highlights learners’ underlying representations of accents as well as concept formation in relation to English pronunciation. I argue that this cognitive aspect of L2 learning should be addressed explicitly in instruction.