Teaching English Pronunciation in Countries where English is a Second Language: Bangladesh Perspective

The aim of this paper is to provide suggestions for teaching English pronunciation in countries where English is spoken as a second/foreign language. This will be partly by means of a literature review of published books currently being in use. This study specifically attempts to answer the following questions: 1) Do teachers regard pronunciation as important? 2) What model is considered best in pronunciation? 3) What technique do they currently use? To obtain primary data, questionnaire and structured interview were used. The researcher has found that: mutual intelligibility, comprehensibility and neutral accent can promote better oral communication. Models like Received Pronunciation or General American can be followed to maintain the standard of English pronunciation. Techniques like computer-assisted aid, audio-visual aid, pronunciation software and the internet can be effective in teaching/ learning English pronunciation. The teaching of pronunciation has been neglected in ESL/EFL settings for the past decades. Grammar-translation method has been the dominant method in this setting for many years. Later in audio lingual method pronunciation practice went on through traditional minimal pair drills and short conversations. Until 1960s teaching and learning pronunciation was “viewed as meaningless non-communicative drill-and-exercise gambits” (Morley, 1991: 485-6).Now the question is which model and technique may be followed. It is really difficult to determine one specific model. RP and GA are the two dominant varieties of English in the world. All over the world there is more American influence than that of Great Britain. In some Middle Eastern countries there are more American officials. But in India they have got their own variety. Their accent is different. In Singapore and Nigeria, there is different accent. The case is also similar in New Zealand and Australia. So it is very difficult to emphasize the RP-ism or Americanism in case of pronunciation learning and teaching. So the need to develop a suitable model for learning pronunciation has become very important all over the world. Now the point is if there is no model, people will create their own model. As a result there will be no standard. The researcher will try to find this alternative model in the critical literature review. Again it is an important issue to find a proper approach for the teaching of pronunciation in countries where English is spoken as a second/ foreign language. There are many old and new approaches which offer lessons for pronunciation learning. This study specifically attempts to answer the following questions: 1) Do teachers regard pronunciation as important? 2) What model is considered best in pronunciation? 3) What technique do they currently use? To obtain primary data, the researcher has used questionnaire and structured interview. The small scale investigation may not cover the entire Indian subcontinent but the researcher believes that it will lead to some useful suggestions for the teaching of English pronunciation in second language context, especially in Bangladesh.