Text 6. The aim of teaching pronunciation

Being able to speak English in a global society is helpful. What constitutes ‘acceptable’ English pronunciation?

Acceptable pronunciation can best be understood if we divide the problem into three parts. A learner’s pronunciation has three basic levels (James, 2010).

Level 1: People often do not understand what the speaker is saying. The speaker uses the wrong sounds when making English words or uses the wrong prosodic features when making English sentences. For example, Hinofotis and Bailey (1980, as cited in Celce-Murcia & Goodwin, 1991) suggest that there is a threshold level for pronunciation; that is, if a speaker has a level of pronunciation that falls below this threshold, he/she will be unable to communicate regardless of his/her knowledge of grammar and vocabulary.

Level 2: People understand what the speaker is saying, but the speaker’s pronunciation is not pleasant to listen to because he/she has a distracting and/or heavy accent. As Morley (1994) noted, when a speaker’s pronunciation performance is heavily accented, it can affect how the speaker is perceived. As Morley (1994) notes, “Speakers are judged to lack credibility and do not inspire confidence in either their knowledge or their persona” (p. 69).

Level 3: People understand the speaker, and the speaker’s English is pleasant to listen to. Scovel (1988) refers to this as comfortable intelligibility, and he suggests that this, rather than native-like accuracy, should be the goal of pronunciation.

Thus the answer to the question, “What constitutes ‘acceptable’ pronunciation?” is the following. A speaker has acceptable pronunciation when other people can understand what he/she says and the speaker’s English is pleasant to listen to; in other words, the speaker is ‘comfortably intelligible.’ Some learners, however, believe that the aim of learning pronunciation is to sound like a native speaker of English. Although this is a worthy individual goal, it should not be the aim of a teacher who wishes to improve their students’ pronunciation and to improve their students’ confidence.

Useful models of English pronunciation are everywhere. One only has to turn on his/her TV and one can find channels like CNN International, BBC, or Sky News. On these channels one will hear many different people (news anchors, reporters, etc.) from Germany, France, and other non-English-speaking countries. Their pronunciation is easy to understand and pleasant to listen to (James, 2010).

Thus, learners do not need to aim for a particular accent, but they do need to develop their own accent which is close to a standard variety, because if you are close to the standard, you can always communicate, and your English will be pleasant. If you are far from the standard, sometimes you will not communicate successfully, and sometimes even if you communicate successfully, you will be judged negatively (James, 2010).

(Source: Abbas Pourhosein Gilakjani. The Significance of Pronunciation in English Language Teaching (2012). English Language Teaching Vol. 5, No. 4, 96-107.)