Teaching the Pronunciation of English

In this chapter, the author outlines some issues one has to consider when teaching pronunciation. As any teacher of English as a foreign language (EFL) will tell students, teaching pronunciation isn’t easy. When it comes to replacing one sound system with another, it’s difficult to change the habits of a lifetime. So it’s no surprise that, even in the most fluent of English learners, with very few exceptions, there remain traces of the speakers’ first language in their English accent. A certain amount of explanation in class about the two forces – intelligibility and identity – will help set the scene for teaching pronunciation, as it would for teaching grammar, vocabulary and other aspects of language. EFL teachers also have to take into account sounds that are the same in the learner’s first language and in English, and those that are different – not only because they are unfamiliar sounds, but because they may be familiar sounds in unfamiliar places.