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PRONUNCIATION PRACTICES IN EFL TEACHING AND LEARNING

PRONUNCIATION PRACTICES IN EFL TEACHING AND LEARNING

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 PRONUNCIATION PRACTICES
IN EFL TEACHING AND LEARNING

HANA VANČOVÁ
 PRONUNCIATION PRACTICES
IN EFL TEACHING AND LEARNING

HANA VANČOVÁ
© Hana Vančová, 2020

Reviewers: prof. PaedDr. Silvia Pokrivčáková, PhD.

prof. Zuzana Straková, PhD.

PaedDr. Rastislav Metruk, Ph.D.

Language editor: Phil Le Mottee

Publisher: Gaudeamus Hradec Králové, 2020

ISBN 978-80-7435-805-0

Published by the University of Hradec Králové Press, Gaudeamus as its 1739th

publication.
 Table of contents
Acknowledgement ................................................................................................................................6
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................8
1 Pronunciation curriculum .......................................................................................................... 12
1.1 Pronunciation teaching in Slovakia .............................................................. 12
1.2 Pronunciation teaching in the global context ........................................... 16
2 Teaching pronunciation .............................................................................................................. 19
2.1 Overview of pronunciation teaching............................................................ 19
2.2 Pronunciation learning strategies ................................................................. 22
2.3 Teachability of pronunciation......................................................................... 24
3 Teachers’ attitudes to teaching pronunciation 27
3.1 Current pronunciation teaching practices ................................................. 27
3.2 Research questions, participants and method ......................................... 30
3.3 Results ...................................................................................................................... 32
3.4 Discussion and conclusions ............................................................................. 42
4 Pre-service teachers’ attitudes to learning pronunciation .......................................... 45
4.1 Overview of the pre-service teachers’ opinions ...................................... 45
4.2 Research method, questions and sampling ............................................... 48
4.3 Results ...................................................................................................................... 51
4.4 Discussion and conclusions ............................................................................. 60
5 Current trends in pronunciation improvement ............................................................... 64
5.1 Introduction to current pronunciation research .................................... 64
5.2 Research methods and questions.................................................................. 65
5.3 Research results ................................................................................................... 67
5.4 Discussion and conclusions ............................................................................. 74
4
6 Conclusions and recommendations ....................................................................................... 76
References ............................................................................................................................................. 79
Appendices............................................................................................................................................ 89

5
 Acknowledgement
I would like to thank all the research participants – the 117 students who
provided answers to the questionnaire.
In addition, I would like to express my sincere and profound gratitude to the
teachers of phonetics of phonology, who were kind enough to spend their time to
answer my inquisitive questions in the interview, share a wealth of their inspiring
information with me and share their unique insight beyond my personal
experience.
Finally, I would like to thank the reviewers of this publication, prof. PaedDr.
Silvia Pokrivčáková, PhD., prof. Zuzana Straková, PhD. and PaedDr. Rastislav
Metruk, Ph.D., for their inspiration and valuable feedback.
This publication is a partial outcome of the research projects 10/TU/2020 E-
learning in teaching English pronunciation and KEGA 001TTU-4/2019 - Higher
education of non-native teachers of foreign languages in national and international
contexts : the needs of non-native teachers of foreign languages in an international
research context.

6
7
 Introduction
Communication is a complex process of information transfer that can take
different shapes – one of them is the acoustic form, also called speech. A unique
feature of speech is pronunciation – the audible representation of a language.
From the pedagogical perspective, pronunciation is often overlooked or
neglected by teachers (e.g. Macdonald, 2002; Celce-Murcia, Brinton & Goodwin,
2010; Metruk, 2020). It is also unflatteringly labelled as Cinderella (Kelly, 1969)
or orphan (Gilbert, 2010). On the contrary, researchers find points of interest not
only in studying the individual sounds of languages (e.g. Gowhary, Azizifar &
Rezaei, 2016; Gooch, Saito & Lyster, 2016) or the importance of suprasegmental
features in communication (e.g. Avery & Ehrlich, 1992; Field, 2005; Hahn, 2012;
Kucukoglu, 2014; Rezaei, Gowhari & Azizifar, 2015), but also in the way
pronunciation can be taught or improved in a controlled classroom setting (e.g.
Nunan, 1999; Kelly, 2000, Goodwin, 2001, Larsen-Freeman, 2001; Straková &
Cimermanová, 2005, Celce-Murcia, Brinton & Goodwin, 2010, Bérešová, 2013,
Pokrivčáková, 2013, Piukovics, 2014). In Slovakia, pronunciation teaching as well
as mistakes learners make have been analysed by, for instance, Kráľová, 2011;
Eddy, 1013; Borošová, 2014; Vančová, 2014; Kehoe, 2015; Metruk, 2020.
One of the goals of pronunciation instruction is the final pronunciation the
speaker has – a wealth of literature suggests that the traditional prestigious native
accents have been the pronunciation goal that non-native learners should speak
(e.g. Janicka, Kul & Weckwerth; Vančová, 2017); however, this goal is confronted
with globalisation and the use of English as a Lingua Franca. This phenomenon has
disturbed the balance in English – nowadays, the majority of English speakers use
it either as their foreign or second language (Crystal, 2019), and the speakers of
minor native accents want to be heard using their accent that represents their
culture and identity (Yule, 2010). Therefore, an alternative to traditional native
models has been formulated and its main points are open to discussion among
scientific and educational communities.
In each country, pronunciation teaching is governed by a specific set of
principles corresponding to the overall curriculum the countries follow. In the
Central European context, national curricula have been under constant
transformation due to political and social changes since the 1990s. According to
Medgyes & Nikolov (2005), formulation of national curricula must meet political
and professional expectations. While the Slovak and Czech Republics previously
8
shared their curricula and language teaching policies, since 1993 they have been
developing their own strategies for improving learners’ language and
pronunciation skills. In the Czech Republic, foreign languages are introduced to
learners in the third grade since 2001 (Najvar, 2010) and a similar policy was
adopted in the Slovak curriculum. Teacher preparation in the Central European
context requires attention since the primary level of education (Portiková, 2012;
Pokrivčáková, 2017).
Pronunciation teaching is very important in Central European countries, as
non-native listeners tend to be biased against non-native speakers in the same way
as native speakers of English are (Hanzlíková & Skrarnitzl, 2017). In Hungary,
Smid (2018) analysed the pre-service teachers’ motivation to become teachers.
The participants claimed to be intrinsically motivated to learn English as well as
learn to become teachers, which suggests a positive future development in the
sphere of pronunciation teaching. However, since each country bases the
pronunciation on specific conditions and aims to address specific needs of the
learners, besides the formulation of precise curricula, compiling national
textbooks, tailored to needs of learners of English from individual Central
European countries should be considered. For instance, Reid (2019) analysed
English textbooks for primary learners to identify the pronunciation features that
should be included into Slovak national teaching materials.
The aim of this publication is to provide an insight into the current
pronunciation teaching practices in a global context. On the basis of the findings, it
provides the views and practices of university teachers of phonetics and
phonology, as well as the opinion of Slovak learners of English on the importance
of pronunciation, preference of native accents and accent goals, as well as the most
preferred techniques to improve their pronunciation in formal school settings and
informal situations.
As suggested in the literature, the problems of the teachers and learners centre
around the following topics:
Methodological issues – the teachers report the lack of theoretical preparation
at their university programmes; therefore, they must rely on available teaching
materials. Although the materials provide exercises on pronunciation teaching,
they do not give teachers the full picture of the possible approaches and techniques
to pronunciation teaching.
• Curricular issues – the overview of the official educational documentation in
Slovakia lacks clarity in the goals of pronunciation teaching in the context of
communicative approach. The lack of clearly set goals gives the teachers
freedom to choose the goals of pronunciation teaching and choose the
sequence of their presentation; however, in combination with the
aforementioned methodological issues, pronunciation appears to remain the
least systematically taught aspect of English in Slovakia.
9
• Pronunciation issues – in addition to the lack of teachers’ preparation and
loosely defined goals, teachers are confronted with the pronunciation issues of
their learners. The mistakes students make are not only on the level of
segmental and suprasegmental deviations from the standard pronunciation,
but they are also based on the unsystematic segmental deviation. As a
consequence, teachers must intervene, but also report insecurities about their
own pronunciation and their role for their students.

All the aforementioned reasons should be taken into consideration when

discussing teaching pronunciation in the context of Slovakia. The issues can be
considered as primary and crucial for the development of successful
communication.
The first chapter introduces the general situation in pronunciation teaching –
the current formal conditions for pronunciation teaching in Slovakia, the trends in
contemporary pronunciation teaching trends and possible factors influencing the
success of pronunciation instruction.
The second chapter discusses several traditional and other more modern
approaches to pronunciation teaching, discusses methodological practices the
teachers may find relevant and strategies used in pronunciation teaching.
The third chapter presents the results of an interview study conducted with
university teachers of phonetics and phonology, who teach the course directly
related to pronunciation. They, on one hand, can evaluate the level of the
pronunciation of students who completed secondary education, and on the other
hand, can have an indirect influence on the future pronunciation teaching practices
in Slovakia, as they prepare pre-service teachers of English. In this way, they shape
opinions, beliefs and cognition of future teachers.
The fourth chapter presents the results of a questionnaire study conducted
with pre-service teachers studying at a Slovak university. The questionnaire aimed
to collect the opinion of students on pronunciation importance, teaching and
learning practices, strategies used when learning pronunciation, and their
attitudes to native accents of English.
Finally, the last chapter presents a investigation into the current research in
pronunciation instruction provided by a meta-analysis of review papers dealing
with various aspects of pronunciation issues and different approaches to
pronunciation improvement.
At the end, conclusions and recommendations are formulated.
The ultimate goal of this publication is to provide an insight into pronunciation
teaching practices in the global context and specifically in Slovakia, and the
selected methods for data collection were interviews with teachers of phonetics
and phonology, pre-service teachers of English and meta-analysis of current
studies into pronunciation teaching practices.
10
11
 1 Pronunciation curriculum

Educational processes are governed by a different and unique set of guidelines

tailored to the specific needs of every country. The guidelines are formally written
as a set of official pedagogical documentation that specifies goals for learners at
different levels of education. The guidelines determine the material conditions of
schools, their organisation and hierarchy, funding, defines the requirements for
qualification of educators and other policies. Alghazo (2015, p. 317) claims that
“[s]uccessful learning, thus, partially relies on how the curriculum of the
instructional program is designed to meet the learning objectives”.

1.1 Pronunciation teaching in Slovakia

In Slovakia, the content of education is defined by the National Education
Programme issued by The National Institute for Education in the Slovak Republic,
one of the organisations belonging under The Ministry of Education, Science,
Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic responsible for, among other roles,
making curricular policies and their implementation into teaching practice.
In Slovakia, English is used and learned as a foreign language, but its status in
the educational system has been constantly redefined. According to Pokrivčáková
(2018), Slovakia has adopted the principles of the the European Union that expects
learners to speak two foreign languages in addition to their mother tongue (M+2
rule). In Slovakia, there have been constant discussions on the selection of the two
languages. On one hand, English is generally perceived as a global and dominant
foreign language and a must in the international labour market; however, due to
geographical proximity of German-speaking countries, and appreciation of a wide
range of Romance languages spoken in Europe and also on other continents, the
holding of debates in Slovakia ebbs and flows, about whether the learners should
be allowed to learn foreign languages according to their personal preferences and
needs, or whether English would be made the ultimate first foreign language of all
learners in Slovakia. The status of the first and second foreign language in Slovakia
is not insignificant – the status influences the age the learners start learning the
languages, as well as the number of lessons per week students study the language.
In this respect, the status of English as a school subject fluctuates between English
12
being the first foreign language of learners, and one of the second languages
taught. Currently, English is given the status of the first foreign language and
learners start to learn it in the 3rd year of their studies.
The curriculum for English is designed with respect to its status. English as a
school subject is also under the umbrella of the National Education Programme and
the document relates the goals of pronunciation teaching with respect to the levels
identified by The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR,
2013).
The Innovated National Educational Programme (Inovovaný štátny vzdelávací
program) covers every subject taught in Slovak schools and English as a school
subject is situated under the umbrella of “Language and Communication”. The
documents contain specific goals for the sphere of communicative language
competences, performance standards, competences and functions. The document
also contains a comprehensive table that points at the relationship between
language competences, functions and linguistic means, followed by a vocabulary
list with the specific lexical items learners should have in their lexicon.
The Innovated National Educational Programme specifying the requirement for
English as a subject is designed for four different school types:
• primary schools,
• lower secondary schools,
• for secondary grammar schools with 4 and 5- year programme and
• for secondary grammar school with 8-year programme.
The Innovated National Educational Programme for primary schools aims for
learners to achieve level A1+ in the 5th year of the learners’ schooling. After the
4th year, learners should be able to know the pronunciation of a limited range of
vocabulary and through developing listening, reading and speaking skills, which
should contribute to the acquisition of a correct pronunciation with appropriate
intonation.
The Innovated National Educational Programme for lower secondary schools is
designed for two levels according to CEFR – A1 and A2. The document for A1 level
specifies the goal of pronunciation teaching as the ability to pronounce a limited
range of words and lexical expressions comprehensible for native speakers
accustomed to speaking with speakers from the same language family of the
learner; however, the document for A2 level does not set specific goals for
pronunciation.
The Innovated National Educational Programme for 4- and 5-year secondary
grammar schools is designed for three levels – B1, B2 and C1 for the second foreign
language. The document for B1 sets only one goal – articulatory comprehensible
pronunciation with occasionally mispronounced words and evident foreign
accent. The document for B2 level, aims for the learner to acquire a clear, natural
pronunciation and intonation. Within the function of ‘describing’, the learner
13
should know how to make new words by changing the stress placement in words
when describing. The document for C1 level specifies the goals as the
pronunciation entire repertoire of phonemes and the use of suprasegmentals
(intonation, word and sentence stress) for comprehension.
The Innovated National Educational Programme for 8-year secondary grammar
schools copies the requirements of the curricula of other study programs, as they
are formulated with respect to CEFR levels.
The aforementioned information indicates the documents set relatively clear
objectives in terms of the overall quality of pronunciation of Slovak learners of
English for different levels; however, the instruction on the relation between
pronunciation phenomena defined by phonetics and phonology and their
useability in communicative situations outside classroom remains vague and
requires from teachers seeking support in other materials than the official
pedagogical documentation.
A more detailed document titled The Target Requirements for the knowledge
and skills of secondary schools graduates/Level B1 and 2 (Cieľové požiadavky na
vedomosti a zručnosti maturantov z anglického jazyka/úrovne B1 a B2; ŠPÚ
2016) identifies the following requirements in pronunciation for segmental and
suprasegmental levels:
• aspiration of fortis plosives,
• the difference between phonemes /v/ and /w/,
• velar nasal /ŋ/,
• vowel / æ/,
• dental consonants /ð / and /θ /,
• all diphthongs except for / ʊǝ/ (e. g. here, ear, where, there),
• triphthongs /aʊǝ/ for flower and /aiǝ/ for fire, tired,
• silent letters,
• linking sounds,
• primary and secondary word stress,
• reduced vowel pronunciation in unstressed syllables, i.e. weak forms,
• sentence stress and rhythm,
• intonation in sentences (rising, falling, their combination).

The document also specifies that B2 learners should recognise and use
intonation in question tags and understand different variants of English
pronunciation and passively know the symbols of the International Phonetic
Alphabet.
As an overall goal, the document formulates the requirement of clear and
comprehensible pronunciation for the B1 learner, and the pronunciation
inaccuracies and native accent should not disturb the communication. The B2
learner should pronounce clearly and naturally with sporadic inaccuracies.
14
 The majority of the pronunciation features listed are universally accepted as
features that change the meaning of words or utterances and are studied by
phonology (Jones, 1970; Roach, 2001; Pavlík, 2000; Cruttenden, 2014). (Non)-
pronunciation of silent letters is related to the knowledge of the English
orthography and they concern primarily the learners with lower proficiency
(Basetti & Atkinson, 2015; Shak, Lee & Stephen, 2016). In addition, the ability to
use linking sounds requires not only a good, native-like pronunciation but also
fluency, based on a good command of grammar and vocabulary.
The examples stated next to diphthongs and triphthongs are taken directly
from the document and point at the requirement of the speakers/learners to use
non-rhotic varieties of English. This implicitly suggests the English pronunciation
model for learners in Slovakia being one of the British varieties, called the BBC
pronunciation (Roach, 2001) or RP (Pavlík, 2000).
The choice of the pronunciation model plays an important role in
pronunciation teaching because it gives learners a target form, they should
achieve. The choice of the non-rhotic variety for a pronunciation model in Slovakia
agrees with the official textbook policy in Slovakia developed by the Ministry of
Education, which published a list of officially approved textbooks the purchase of
which is financially supported by the ministry (Zoznam schválených učebníc,
schválených učebných textov, schválených pracovných zošitov a odporúčaných
učebníc, na zakúpenie ktorých ministerstvo školstva poskytne školám finančné
prostriedky, edicnyportal.sk, 2018). The list of approved textbooks reveals the
dominant role major British publishing houses play in the textbook market in
Slovakia, due to the presentation of not only specific British pronunciation, which
is expected in them, but also Scottish, Irish and even American accents.
The list of approved textbooks reveals that dominant role in the textbook
market in Slovakia play major British publishing houses and the presentation of
British pronunciation is expected. However, this expectation is not completely
fulfilled, because several series (e.g. New English File or Face2Face) confront the
learners not only with the traditional prestigious British accents, but periodically
introduce also American or other British accents (e. g. Scottish). Pavliuk (2020)
analysed a number of exercises in general English textbooks used in Slovak schools
– across 22 publications, she identified 594 exercises. The specific information on
the amount of non-RP accents in currently presented to learners in general English
textbooks used in Slovakia is not available at present; however, the author strives
to address this issue in her future research attempts.
Wrembel (2005) made an overview of English pronunciation teaching
materials (30 textbooks and 14 CD-ROMs) and evaluated the number of accents
presented to learners in the materials available in Poland. The evaluated materials
presented different models in different media – while textbook predominantly
presented British accents, followed by American and even an Australian one, CD-
15
ROMs predominantly presented American accents. Wrembel also noticed an
increased interest in suprasegmentals.
The shift in the presentation of different pronunciation models in textbook
suggests the current set target requirements do not have to be the ultimate ones,
but should take into consideration the impact of globalisation in all spheres of life,
including education and pronunciation teaching.

1.2 Pronunciation teaching in the global context

English is rich in its variants and several accents have been generally accepted
as standard forms for certain groups of native speakers, even if not all accents have
been accepted as pronunciation models for non-native speakers (Janicka, Kul &
Weckwerth, 2005). The accent is a characteristic feature that the speaker is aware
of and is a source of pride (Bérces, 2008, Yule, 2010). There are speakers who
would never accommodate their pronunciation to their listener and would prefer
to remain acoustically divergent from their listeners.
The English language has long lost the status of a national language used within
a small community – for decades it has been used as a Lingua Franca. Crystal
(2019) claims the non-native speakers of English have outnumbered the native
speakers, therefore, while in the past communication between a native speaker
and a non-native speaker used to be an asymmetric act, where one of the parts
spoke their native language and the other did not, these days, communication of
non-native speakers is symmetric because both speak a foreign language and bring
some traces of their mother tongue into English at all levels. Since pronunciation
is the primary mode of communication, globalisation has impacted pronunciation
as well. The traditional terms “English as a second language” or “English as a
foreign language” has got a new competitor – “English as an international
language”. While the former two concepts refer to communication of a native and
non-native speaker, Jenkins (2002) uses the latter term in relation to the
communication of two non-native speakers.
Levis (2005) presents a matrix of communicative situations of native and non-
native communicative participants and introduces the terms intelligibility that
takes into consideration varying value of speech elements as well as the
importance of context the communication takes places. For intelligibility, the
listener is more important than the speakers, because “intelligibility tends to mean
different things to different people and depends, to a certain degree, on the
attitude or point of view of the listener” (Macdonald 2002, p. 8).
Levis (2005) contrasts two principles – nativeness principle and intelligibility
principle. Nativeness aims for the native-like pronunciation that competes with
biological constraints of learners, thus setting unrealistic goals to both, teacher and
16
the learner. Intelligibility principle, that promotes improving those features that
make the speaker understood, even if the learners retain some features of the
native accents, as not all features carry an equal amount of importance for
understanding between two parts of communication. Levis perceives that the shift
is directed to promoting intelligibility and inclusion of foreign accents into
pronunciation teaching; however, professional users of English should
concentrate on the native accents in their pronunciation training.
To comply with the growing variety of English pronunciation accents of English
(native and non-native), need to define “a minimum general intelligibility” (Roach,
2001, p. 7), a common ground for pronunciation, has been proposed.
Jenkins (2002) introduced her Lingua Franca Core curriculum for the
pronunciation that includes the following core features:
• preference of rhotic accent,
• some substitutions of the dentals,
• British /t/ in words latter or water,
• allophonic variations in words that do not change the meaning,
• additional requirements,
• aspiration for fortis plosives in word-initial positions,
• fortis clipping,
• pronunciation of all consonants in the word-initial consonant clusters,
• consonant clusters simplified in the manner of native-like pronunciation,
• consonant cluster nt in the word-medial position maintained,
• the contrast between short and long vowels,
• consistent l2 regional substitutions,
• word stress for contrastive purposes.

Besides core features, Jenkins also introduces the non-core features that
facilitate comprehensibility. They include the following range of pronunciation
features:
• dentals and the allophone [ɫ],
• consistent vowel quality,
• weak forms,
• assimilation at word boundaries,
• attitudinal and grammatical intonation,
• word stress,
• stress-timed rhythm.

The view on the pronunciation features selected as core and non-core contains
a mixture of segmental and suprasegmental features, as well as positional variants
of phonemes that were methodically treated in pronunciation instruction classes
17
with great attention. For instance, Van den Doel (2010) takes the issue of replacing
dentals by other obstruent not only as a mark of pronunciation, but also as a mark
of social class and a possible reason of the speakers’ stigmatisation if pronounced
incorrectly.
Although the proposed curriculum was met with understanding among the
teachers (Sewell, 2010; Rahimi & Ruzrokh, 2016) because it would provide them
with universal guidelines in pronunciation teaching, there are critics also, who
view it as “controversial” (Detering (2011), call it “politically correct” and
“artificial” (Sobkowiak, 2005). Sobkowiak also points at the fact that language goes
beyond communication, which is not taken into account in the Lingua Franca Core.
While the Slovak requirements identify the interlingual differences between
the Slovak and English acoustic repertoire of a particular variety of English (a non-
rhotic one) and demand the Slovak high-school leavers know and actively use
them, the Lingua Franca curriculum turns into itself and identifies the possible
causes of phoneme substitutions and takes into consideration the inner
peculiarities of English phoneme distribution. The proposed curriculum by Jenkins
(2002) also looks at the structure of English sounds above the segment and
identifies additional or secondary shifts in the meaning of the words across accents
and varieties of English She also considers that even native speakers often speak
with their social or regional accents and they do not interfere with communication,
while non-native accents do. Due to globalisation and the disappearance of native
accents among speakers of English, finding a common ground for pronunciation
for educational purposes is worth consideration.

18
 2 Teaching pronunciation

Acoustic form of communication – speech, is the primary and most direct mode
of communication for most people at the level of a society and an individual.
Contrary to writing systems, there is no community in the world that could exist
without speech.
Comprehensible and clear speaking is difficult in every language, including the
mother tongue. To articulate well and deliver the message at the comprehensible
rate and emphasis on the most logical parts of utterances requires effort in every
language. The challenges in speaking are confirmed by the number of materials
available to improve rhetorical skills and rhetorical activities.

2.1 Overview of pronunciation teaching

Current research into the attitudes of teachers towards pronunciation teaching
indicates that teachers generally (Mcdonald, 2000; Foote, et al., 2016) do not
favour teaching it. Teachers find themselves theoretically underprepared and
practically untrained in pronunciation teaching techniques; however, this trend
does not seem to be relatively new. The International Phonetic Association, an
umbrella association of phoneticians from all around the world, was established at
the end of the 19th century thanks to the activities of language teachers who were
aware of the pronunciation importance but lacked official materials that would
allow them to teach foreign languages in all their complexity, including the correct
acoustic form (Crystal, 2010).
Murphy & Baker (2015) overview the history of teaching pronunciation to the
ESL learners and maintain that the first investigations into phonology and
pronunciation teaching can be traced to India 3,000 years ago, to Greece 1,800
years ago and to learners of Latin in the 16th century, but recognise four major
waves of pronunciation instruction: (1) “imitative-intuitive” instruction from the
1850s, (2) establishment of the International Phonetic Association and the use of
“analytic-linguistic instructional practices” at the turn of the 19th and 20th
century, (3) the introduction of communicative principles to teaching
pronunciation and (4) empirically based pronunciation teaching in the mid-1990s.
19
The former two waves share similarities to the classification by Celce-Murcia
(2010) and are oriented towards the development of phonology as a discipline, the
latter two are focus on the development of pronunciation teaching proper.
Celce-Murcia et al. (2010) recognises two main approaches to pronunciation
training – (1) intuitive-imitative approach based on the discrimination of sounds
and their intuitive imitation of pronunciation models and (2) analytic-linguistic
approach based on explicit definitions, explanations, description, demonstration,
etc.)
The main approaches and methods of a foreign language, in general, treat
pronunciation differently – while the Direct Method, Audiolingual Method or Silent
Way Approach focused at pronunciation errors in order to correct them based on
repetition and drill, Grammar-Translation Method, Total Physical Response
Approach or Communicative Approach do not view pronunciation as the key
component of language teaching (Celce-Murcia, 2010). The last of the mentioned
approaches, Communicative Approach, has been the dominant approach to foreign
language teaching since the end of the 20th century and views pronunciation as a
competence that can be taught on the background of teaching other aspects of
communication. The main techniques and practices include:
• listening and imitating a model,
• phonetic training based on descriptions of articulation and phonetic
transcription,
• minimal pair drills based on the discrimination of words based on phonemes,
• using minimal pairs in a sentence context,
• visual aids used to make cues of target sounds,
• tongue twisters,
• development of approximation skills based on the chronological acquisition of
sounds,
• the practice of vowel and stress shifts in words with affixes,
• reading aloud,
• recording of learners’ production for the purposes of self-, peer and teacher
evaluation.

The aforementioned techniques and practices were listed by Celce-Murcia et

al. (2010) and they are a selection of partial techniques of the previous approaches
and methods to foreign language teaching.
Arising from the communicative approach, there are two main approaches to
pronunciation teaching focus-on-form and focus-on-forms. The difference
between the two approaches lies in the focus of the instruction – while the focus-
on-form (FonF) is based on the use of the communicative value of pronunciation
that is trained in meaningful contexts with minimal attention to the description of
pronunciation features, focus-on-forms (FonFS) is based on theoretical teaching of
20
pronunciation features. This approach presents a certain shift in pronunciation
improvement, as it allows integrating pronunciation into language improvement
classes (Saito, 2012). On the contrary, traditional English lessons would treat
pronunciation as a separate language aspect, as, for instance, the presentation,
practice, production model as discussed by Anderson (2017; compare phoneme
identification – automatisation – transfer into speech, Gilner, 2008).
Other competing approaches are the traditional distinction of a bottom-up and
top-down approach to teaching pronunciation. While the bottom-up introduces
individual segments first, and only after their familiarisation learners move to
higher units (chronologically word stress, sentence stress, intonation), top-down
approach introduces pronunciation features through long utterances and through
the use of the higher pronunciation units that learners slowly familiarise along
with the lower units that naturally occur in longer utterances. The debate on the
precedence or segments or suprasegmentals is still open, as some pronunciation
experts advocate the communicative value of word stress or intonation (e.g. Avery
& Ehrlich, 1992; Field, 2005; Hahn, 2012; Kucukoglu, 2014; Rezaei, Gowhari &
Azizifar, 2015, and others defend the importance of individual segments in
communication (e.g. Gowhary, Azizifar & Rezaei, 2016; Gooch, Saito & Lyster,
2016) .
Among other more recent techniques, gesture is used to teach and correct
pronunciation (catchment, Smotrova 2017). This helps learners perceive hardly
noticeable events in speech by using appropriate gestures representing
pronunciation features can have different functions (Thompson & Renandya,
2020): iconic (representing concrete objects), metaphoric (representing abstract
meanings), deictic (indicating) and beat (indicating rhythm).
A similar approach is the pronunciation improvement direction by represents
kinaesthetic and haptic shadowing that was primarily used for the improvement
of listening skills, but its use has been investigated in the current research.
“Haptic in this context refers to systematic hand movement across the visual
field accompanying speech that typically terminates in a touch of some kind, like
one hand touching the other. That touch occurs simultaneously with the
articulation of a stressed syllable of a word, focal stress of a phrase or a prominent
word in discourse” (Acton et al., 2013).
Specific movements were established to accompany an acoustic input for a
learner to follow and to reinforce the instruction given to learners.
Shadowing is also used in pronunciation instruction as “the process of copying
the model as accurately as possible, students first pay attention to listening to the
detailed features of the incoming sounds, including each phoneme, stress,
intonation, and accents. Then, moving their muscle in their mouth, they reproduce
them almost simultaneously and unconsciously” (Hamada, 2018b, p. 22).

21
 Another opportunity that can play into pronunciation improvement is the
conscious work with learners who can employ and carry out their observation in
theoretical aspects of pronunciation. Couper (2011) suggests using socially
constructed metalanguage and critical listening in a pronunciation classroom. Both
concepts are based on students’ perception of the concepts of pronunciation.
Socially construct*ed metalanguage is based on the formulation of specific
vocabulary for pronunciation aspects by a particular group of learners by, for
instance, describing or comparing the differences between two sounds. Critical
listening is based on perceiving meaningful differences in pronunciation. Both
types of tasks can improve short-term pronunciation of learners.

2.2 Pronunciation learning strategies

Learning is a process that must be driven primarily by learners who must be
active to achieve the set goal. Learners vary in their setting to learn and apply
different procedures to progress on their journey towards knowledge. It is the role
of the teachers to guide them on the journey and use appropriate methods and
techniques to spark interest and transfer the message to their learners.
The approaches of good learners of languages started to be investigated in the
1970s and the term learning strategies was coined. Zare (2012, p. 163) defines
them as “special ways of processing information that improve comprehension,
learning, or retention of the information”. Over the years, several taxonomies were
developed. Among the most popular ones are the classifications by O’Malley, which
distinguishes metacognitive, cognitive and socio-affective strategies. Rubin’s
classification divides them into learning, communicative and social strategies.
Stern identified management and planning strategies, cognitive strategies,
communicative – experiential strategies, interpersonal strategies and affective
strategies (for details, see for example Zare, 2012; Pawlak & Szyszka, 2018).
The most popular taxonomy of learning strategies used in pronunciation
training is the taxonomy by Oxford (1991). Learning strategy is defined by Oxford
(1990, p. 1) as “steps taken by students to enhance their own learning”.
Specifically, for learning languages, strategies are critical, as they are viewed as
“tools for active, self-directed involvement, which is essential for developing
communicative competence” (ibid.).
The strategies formulated by Oxford (1990) focus on the development of the
communicative competence by encouraging the students to guide actively the
process of its development by allowing them to solve problems variously,
including self-reflection, cooperation or instinct. Learners can sequence the
activities in a manner that helps them learn. On the other hand, learners can learn
how to improve their existing learning patterns and give new competences to the
teachers, who can organise the learning process in a non-traditional way, so that
22
the learner is central in the process of language learning. She distinguished two
main types and three subcategories for each subtype:

I Direct
• memory strategies (creating mental linkages, applying images and
sounds, reviewing well, employing action)
• cognitive strategies (practising, receiving and sending messages,
analysing and reasoning, creating a structure for input and output)
• compensation strategies (guessing intelligently, overcoming limitations
in speaking and writing)
II. Indirect
• metacognitive strategies (centring your learning, arranging and planning
your learning, evaluating your learning)
• affective strategies (lowering your anxiety, encouraging yourself, taking
your emotional temperature)
• social strategies (asking questions, cooperating with others, empathising
with others)

Direct strategies allow learners to use different mental processes – to make use
of memory, reason and logic, and allow them to use compensatory language tactics,
such as guessing and synonyms.
Indirect strategies rely on the use of other abilities of the learners, i.e. manage
their cognition, support interaction and use affection to improve communicative
language skills.
With respect to Oxford’s learning strategies, Peterson (1997, cited from Berkil,
2008), compiled a list of strategies and activities specifically for pronunciation
teaching that is often being used to address the actual practices in the foreign
language classrooms:
• memory – using the IPA alphabet, personal codes or made-up song and rhymes
to learn the pronunciation of words,
• cognitive – imitation of a model (native speaker or teacher), repetition silently
or loudly after a model (native speaker, teacher, video), talking silently or
loudly to oneself, using exercises to learn sound, practising sounds in isolation
and in context, listening to pronunciation errors of other language learners,
observing articulation, paying attention to the pronunciation of the foreign
language, making hypotheses about pronunciation rules, remembering
pronunciation and articulation of words, using flashcards, listening to
authentic materials, being aware of the pronunciation during the process of
speaking, speaking slowly in order to pronounce words correctly, recording
and listen to one’s own pronunciation, observing and practising accents
(Spanish), changing the speed of speaking, noticing the contrast between the
23
 mother tongue and the target language, practising the pronunciation silently
before speaking,
• compensation – repeatedly practising difficult words,
• metacognitive – learning about phonetics in general, reading about
pronunciation rules, looking for pronunciation models, looking for individual
feedback by another person, avoiding practising inappropriate sounds in the
mother tongue, deciding to focus on listening and learning on particular
sounds, deciding to memorise sounds, deciding to present presentation from
memory, writing difficult words in very large font in poster papers,
• affective – having fun with mispronunciations, imitation of sounds with native
language words,
• social – asking someone to correct the pronunciation, speaking English with
others, asking someone to pronounce a word, studying with someone, teaching
someone else.

Oxford’s language strategies did not go unnoticed in the literature, as several

studies were conducted in order to investigate, which of the strategies are
successful or which of them have proven to be used most frequently by the users
(e.g. Akyol,2013; Rokoszewska, 2012). Pawlak & Szyszka (2018) in their meta-
analysis of research papers identified cognitive and memory strategies as the most
preferred by students, but metacognitive, social and affective are also popular
among learners. However, Grzegorzewska (2017) maintains that the application
of language learning can be more beneficial with the decreasing proficiency level
of learners,

2.3 Teachability of pronunciation

Theoretical approaches to the ideal pronunciation training and acquisition are
often being questioned by opinions whether pronunciation can be taught and what
are the realistic and achievable results with respect to several factors contributing
to the limited improvement non-native learners typically achieve. The opinions of
pronunciation improvement limits are based on the experience of the language
teachers and often shape the discourse on pronunciation training.
There are different aspects of limits to learning or acquiring a foreign language
pronunciation, Kenworthy (1987) lists the following factors:
Age limit or Critical period hypothesis for pronunciation acquisition is often
perceived as the most important factor acquiring or learning a foreign language
accent, as the abilities of the learners to speak with no trace of the mother tongue
disappears with age. The issues of pronunciation acquisition are not only
dependent on the “brain plasticity and the differential function of the two
hemispheres of the brain” (Nunan, 1999, p. 42), but also on the ability of
24
articulatory organs to make speech sounds. Kenworthy (1987) estimates the age
to be between 10 and 13 years of age. The sounds the learners acquire at a very
young age shape the final pronunciation in any foreign language that a speaker
speaks. However, countless studies have investigated (e.g. Flege, 1987, Bialystok,
1997, Bongaerts, 1997, Du, 2010), whether certain pronunciation features can be
learned in various capacities and whether the age limit for learners presents an
insurmountable obstacle in communication. The long-term effect of pronunciation
training has also been investigated (Couper, 2006; Dlaska & Krekeler, 2013;
Thomson & Derwing, 2014). In this respect, the terms intelligibility or
comprehensibility as the attainable pronunciation goal were introduced into
foreign language teaching.
Mother tongue of the learners influences the overall pronunciation of the
foreign learners to such extent that fruitful research of pronunciation mistakes
typical for learners of languages was conducted (in Slovakia, e.g. Kráľová, 2011;
Vančová, 2014; Kehoe, 2015). For pronunciation teaching, it implies the
identification of these mistakes and the application of suitable measures into
pronunciation training.
For instance, Kelly (2000) has designed a comprehensible table with typical
mistakes of the learners of the selected 13 languages. The table clearly shows that
mistakes vary across the languages. For instance, a frequently mispronounced
group of dentals / θ/ and /ð/typically does not present a problem for Greek and
Spanish learners, but on the contrary, French and Chinese learners compensate
each of the sounds with up to three other phonemes. However, Grant (2014)
claims that speakers of similar languages can achieve almost native-like
pronunciation. Learners of foreign languages with the inability to pronounce the
newly acquired language with a full range of phonemes of the new language often
compensate the sounds by transphonemisation, i.e. substitution of a sound of the
source language to the sounds of the target language (for Slovak learners, see
Ološtiak, 2002).
Exposure to the target language is a key factor affecting constant training and
(Rubin, 1975, p. 42) uses the term “opportunity”. The term ‘exposure’ often refers
to living in a country where the target language is spoken. Learners living in
English-speaking countries tend to get better results in pronunciation
improvement because they receive input also outside the classroom. In countries
where English is not spoken on a daily basis, teachers are often models of
pronunciation. Chen (2013) indicates that pronunciation features typical for
teachers can be often found in the pronunciation of their learners.
Phonetic ability sometimes called aptitude, or ability to discriminate and
pronounce sounds. This ability is innate, although research has shown it can be
trained. Kennworthy (1987) claims students with good phonetic ability can
improve their pronunciation by drills, while other learners do not. Baker Smemoe
25
& Haslan (2013) relate aptitude to pronunciation accuracy. Aptitude is also
supported by the musical abilities of learners, who pronounce more accurately
than learners with a less musical ability (Milovanov et al., 2010). Musical abilities
are especially important for mastering intonation and rhythm.
Attitude and identity of the learner is another factor of pronunciation quality,
as the perception of self and sense of belonging to and identification with a certain
group of speakers influences the way learners approach pronunciation training.
Yule (2010) defines the phenomenon of accommodation of pronunciation as
convergence. People are convergent when they want to belong to a group and want
to be accepted by the listener. The opposite process, divergence, relates to
maintaining the accent irrespective of the listener to show either belonging to one
group of speakers or demonstration of distance from another group of speakers.
Motivation is a key factor in many spheres of human life, not only in
pronunciation learning. Kenworthy (1987, p. 8) uses the expression “concern”
about the way speakers sound. The degree of this pronunciation concern depends
on the speakers’ understanding of the meaningfulness of pronunciation in
communication and also the impact of pronunciation in real life, e.g. professional
development of the learner (Moyer, 2015). The main motivational factors are
integrative (a pleasure to meet and befriend with L2 speaker), intrinsic (personal
satisfaction to improve pronunciation), extrinsic (social pressure or goals, e.g.
school performance), and curiosity factors (a pleasure to learn the pronunciation
of a new word; Sardegna et al., 2014).
The list of factors affecting pronunciation of a foreign language learners reveals
the different factors typical for learners or the environment they live in; however,
in learning pronunciation, there is another very important factor that must be
taken into consideration. One of the most important factors is the teacher.
“Teachers must take a step back from current practice and evaluate their own
pronunciation skills and teaching methodologies, and also have access to them
current research, so that they are able to look at how they can improve not only
the communicative skills of their students, but also their own” (Setter & Jenkins,
2004, p. 13).
Without a doubt, teachers shape the relationship of the learners towards the
subject they teach and they influence the amount of information the learner
acquires. Beyond their expertise in the subject and choice of teaching
methodology.

26
 3 Teachers’ attitudes to teaching
pronunciation

Teachers have, without a doubt, a decisive impact on their learners, pre-service

teachers are no exception. Teachers influence their students, not only on the level
of the knowledge the students to gain during the lessons, but the teachers’ attitude
to the subject shapes the views of learners to the subject. However, although this
influence is well known to the general public, the teaching profession has a varying
level of prestige across Europe, according to Study on Policy Measures to improve
the Attractiveness of the Teaching Profession in Europe, Vol. 2 (European Union,
2013). The Visegrád Group countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and
the Slovak Republic) have a similar situation among the teaching profession. The
results of Teaching and Learning International Survey TALIS 2018 Insights and
Interpretations (Schleicher, 2018) indicate that the countries are below average in
the indicators of social evaluation of the teaching profession (data for Poland not
indicated) and relative salaries to tertiary-educated workers.

3.1 Current pronunciation teaching practices

In the following section, results of selected studies dealing with teachers
practices and beliefs will be presented, because practices of teachers have a
different character in the global context.
Henderson et al. (2012) carried out a research study that investigated the
pronunciation and training of teachers from Finland, France, Germany, Macedonia,
Poland, Spain and Switzerland. In addition to that, the authors were interested in
teachers’ preferences in pronunciation models and goals they set for their
learners. The data collected by the questionnaire identified national differences
among teachers, as many of the aspects are related to conditions in a particular
country. However, the general conclusion is that the teachers’ education does not
correspond to their classroom needs and their training is viewed as “woefully
inadequate” (p. 23). The teachers reported their own preference of RP accent but
the preference of GA by their students. Students also expressed the varying level
of aspiration to sound native-like.

27
 One of the most frequently cited studies is the findings of Foote, Trofimovich,
Collins & Soler Urzúa (2016) who investigated pronunciation teaching practices in
Canadian schools. Their longitudinal observation of three teachers revealed that
pronunciation instruction constitutes 10% of all classes and takes the form of
unplanned corrective feedback on segmental issues.
In Australia, Macdonald (2000) performed an in-depth interview with eight
Australian teachers who claimed to be spending less time with pronunciation
training than they felt was necessary for their learners and who did not like it and
were not good at teaching it. The teachers reported the issues arising from a lack
of curricular guidance, a lack of appropriate teaching materials and a lack of
guidance for the assessment of intelligible pronunciation, they were unsure about
the appropriateness in approaching correction of pronunciation errors and had
questions arising concerning integrating pronunciation training into
communicative classes. The recommendations Macdonald formulated concerning
the aforementioned teachers’ findings would promote teaching pronunciation and
remove the obstacles that prevent teachers from improving the learners’
pronunciation.
On a more practical level, Buss (2015) studied the beliefs and practices of
Brazilian teachers of English. Almost a third of the teachers taught pronunciation
always and almost half of them taught pronunciation often. The most frequently
taught features were “problematic sounds”. Concerning pronunciation activities,
the most frequently used were students’ imitations and repetitions, practice of the
phonetic alphabet and minimal pairs drills. On the contrary, the least frequently
used were the explicit instruction based on the observation of learners’
articulation in the mirror, body movement used to express the presence of a
pronunciation feature (e.g. a step, a clap, tap, head nod to indicate stress or
intonation pattern), and using jazz chants to practice rhythm.
In Japan, Koike (2016) compared the opinion of native English-speaking
teachers (N = 22) and Japanese speaking teachers (N = 26) of pronunciation. The
comparison highlighted that while native-speaking teachers preferred
communicative practice of pronunciation, the Japanese teachers preferred explicit
instruction; however, the most frequently used techniques among both groups
were repetition, reading aloud, shadowing and minimal pairs practice. The least
frequently used were kinaesthetic reinforcement and teaching phonetic symbols.
Another difference between the two groups of instructors was in the perception of
the importance of pronunciation teaching with relation to other skills – while
native speakers viewed pronunciation as moderately important (62%) or slightly
important (24%), Japanese teachers viewed pronunciation equally as very or
moderately important (both 38%). While the majority of native speakers display
a high level of confidence in pronunciation skills (extremely 45%, quite 50%),
most Japanese teachers are mostly somewhat (42%) or quite confident (35%)
28
with their pronunciation. Native speakers were mostly quite confident to teach
pronunciation (38%), half of the Japanese teachers were somewhat confident to
teach it. Koike’s (2016) recommendations are based on integrating pronunciation
into communicative classes, providing teachers with the pedagogical
documentation that would guide them with pronunciation teaching as well as
educating teachers with the issues of phonetics and phonology.
Another study carried out in Japan by Uchida & Sugimoto (2016) confirmed
that teachers are more confident in teaching individual words than longer texts
units, because while pronunciation of individual words can be checked in a
dictionary, pronunciation of sentences is less governed by rules. Additionally,
Uchida & Sugimoto confirmed that confident teachers have a positive attitude to
pronunciation teaching, contrary to less confident teachers.
Chen (2016) investigated how 47 in-service teachers in mainland China and
Hong Kong reflect on their own pronunciation and adapt it according to the ability
of their learners to help the learners understand the input. Repetition, change on
the segmental and suprasegmental level and modification of speech rate were the
most frequent modifications the teachers made to raise their intelligibility to their
learners. Conversely, the same features the teachers avoid also cause
misunderstanding in the speech of their learners. To improve the learners’
pronunciation, teachers mostly apply techniques that are time-saving and easily
used with larger groups of learners, i.e. reading aloud and pronunciation
modelling.
Investigation of the teachers of English and their attitudes to pronunciation is
a global issue, as evidenced in the study by Ulla (2017), with a group of 51 teachers
consisting of primary and university teachers of English from Myanmar. In the
questionnaire, the item “I can pronounce English clearly so that other people can
understand me”, the majority of participants indicated only average confidence
(52.94%) and 29.41% of participants even expressed being not very/not at all
confident. Only the remaining 17.65% of participants are very or quite confident
with their pronunciation. In group discussions, the teachers expressed a lack of
communication with native speakers of English made them feel afraid of being
misunderstood and not able to understand others.
Szyszka (2016) investigated the attitudes and pronunciation teaching practices
of Polish teachers of English. All teachers claimed to have improved their
pronunciation after they started teaching it to their students.
In Slovakia, Bodorík (2017), Datko (2013) and Metruk (2020) carried out their
research studies on the pronunciation practices of teachers in Slovak secondary
schools.
Datko (2013) interviewed 11 Slovak secondary school teachers, who were
asked to express the level of their confidence in teaching English pronunciation.
Out of all the participants, 6 teachers claimed to be confident with teaching
29
pronunciation; however, the author describes the tone of 5 teachers answering the
question as “a kind of defensive” and only one teacher could confirm she taught
pronunciation with the same confidence as vocabulary and grammar. The second
group of teachers (N = 3) felt less confident teaching pronunciation than other
layers of language, one of them citing a “mental block” and the remaining 2
teachers agreed on the lack of preparation to teach pronunciation from their
teacher training. The final group of respondents (N = 2) admitted lacking
confidence teaching the pronunciation of words with lower frequency.
Bodorík (2017) used a questionnaire to elicit the opinions of 90 teachers of
English from Slovakia concerning pronunciation teaching. All teachers except one,
viewed pronunciation as an important part of language learning and all of them
also claimed to teach it to a different extent – 79% of teachers claimed to teach it
during every class when a pronunciation phenomenon appeared, and 11% would
strictly follow pronunciation exercises in the textbook. The remaining two
teachers would deal with pronunciation when a significant mistake occurred. In
terms of error correction, of all, only 9 teachers corrected mistakes when they
impacted intelligibility, the rest of the teachers would either correct every mistake
or correct a repeated mistake. From the techniques, imitation and identification
were dominant pronunciation teaching practices. A majority of teachers (36.7%)
evaluated their own preparation to teach pronunciation based on university
studies as good and 34.4% as average; only 14.4% as excellent and 10 teachers
labelled their preparation as poor.
Metruk (2020) collected the opinions of 50 secondary-school teachers via a
questionnaire. The teachers agreed on the importance of teaching both segments
and suprasegmentals, and they were mostly neutral on the number of exercises in
textbooks on segments and suprasegmentals. Almost half of them (46%) also use
additional exercises in their classes. A majority of teachers agreed that teaching
pronunciation is more or less as important as teaching vocabulary and grammar,
and segments and suprasegmentals are equally important to teach. The teachers
also claimed suprasegmentals and segments as equal in terms of their own
production and also teaching.
All three studies from the Slovak context suggest that pronunciation is not
neglected in Slovakia; even if the teachers did not receive the level of training in
pronunciation teaching, they would find adequate. Overall, the reported results
correspond to pronunciation teaching practices and opinions in the global context.

3.2 Research questions, participants and method

To complete the picture of the practices and beliefs of pronunciation teachers
in the Slovak context, a semi-structured in-depth interview with guiding questions

30
(Appendix 1) based on the research questions of McDonald (2002), Buss (2015),
Koike (2016) and Uchida & Sugimoto (2016), was designed.
The main aim of the interview was to answer the following questions:
1. What are the organisational conditions in which the teachers teach phonetics and
phonology?
2. What are the teachers’ attitudes to teaching pronunciation or phonetics and
phonology? How has their relationship to the subject changed?
3. What is the importance of pronunciation/phonetics and phonology according to
the teachers?
4. What are the teachers’ preferences regarding teaching particular pronunciation
issues?
5. What are the aims of the courses the teachers teach?
6. Which pronunciation model do the teachers prefer?
7. What practices do the teachers include in their lessons?
8. What is the opinion of university teachers on the quality of pronunciation
instruction on lower levels of education?
9. What effect has pronunciation training/teaching phonetics and phonology had on
their students?

Participants and sampling

To answer the research questions, university teachers of phonetics and
phonology were identified as a group of possible participants in the interview due
to two main reasons – their teaching subject matter concerns pronunciation and
also the linguistic layer that the primary and secondary teachers are most
reluctant to teach. An insight into the discipline from the perspective of an expert
in the subject could identify the essential knowledge and teaching skills the English
teachers should master to be competent to teach pronunciation and its use in the
classroom. In other words, the interviews aimed to advise the teachers of English
who lack knowledge and confidence to teach pronunciation. The second reason is
that the teachers of phonetics and phonology at universities work with students of
English, therefore are knowledgeable of the state of the quality of students’
pronunciation after they complete secondary education and subsequently have a
formative influence on the future teachers of English.
Interview requests were sent to seven teachers in Slovakia and five of them
decided to participate in the interview. The Slovak teachers who participated were
evenly distributed from all of three regions in Slovakia (Western, Central, Eastern).
Another 13 requests were sent to teachers upon recommendation of the existing
participating teachers, who were their teaching colleagues in other European
countries. Eventually, dialogue was established with several teachers and three
more teachers (from Hungary) agreed to participate in the interview.

31
 Finally, the total number of teachers participating in the research was
increased to 8. To maintain teachers’ confidentiality, teachers are labelled with the
initial letter T for teacher and the number 1 to 8, according to the chronological
order they were interviewed.
The teachers who participated were all qualified teachers of English with
teaching experience ranging from 5 (T5) to 26 years (T6). English phonetics and
phonology were the primary teaching and research subject; the other subjects they
teach are either teaching methodology (T1, 3, 4, 5), linguistic disciplines (T2, 3, 4,
5, 6, 7), culture (T8) or courses improving communicative competence of their
students. Based on all the data collected, all of the teachers participating comply
with the requirements set for the interview.

Method
The interviews were conducted in the Slovak language with the Slovak
participants; therefore, their answers had to be translated. Only the three
interviews with the non-Slovak participants were conducted in English. The
interview followed the guidelines defined by Ondrejkovič (2007) and Mackey &
Gass (2009).
The first interview was conducted on 7th July 2020 and the last interview took
place on 7th September 2020. The length of the interviews ranged from 25 minutes
and 25 seconds (T7) to 1 hour, 55 minutes and 7 seconds (T5). All interviews,
except interview 1, were conducted via video calls or phone calls due to the current
travelling restrictions. All teachers interviewed were informed about the purpose
of the interview and gave their consent to the interview being recorded. Upon
request, the teachers could preview the questions. All teachers had been assured
that their responses would remain anonymous. The interviews were transcribed
verbatim; however, the pauses and false starts were removed from the presented
utterances as the analysis of the psychological processes of the teachers during the
interview was not the primary goal of this research effort. Due to technical issues
caused by the Internet and telephone connections, the quality of the recordings
was not consistent; therefore, the parts of interviews with low quality of the
recorded utterances were not included in the evaluation to avoid
misinterpretation of the participants’ statements.

3.3 Results
1. What are the organisational conditions that the teachers use to teach phonetics
and phonology?
All teachers reported the weekly span they are given to work with students is
not sufficient, but T6 claims “of course not but everybody feels so, so that that doesn't
really matter. we have to fit in this time frame. I also understand that students find
32
this more than enough”. In terms of the role of the course of phonetics and
phonology, three interesting trends can be observed about the course. The first
trend is the reduction of the classes – teachers 2 and 3 reported that the subject
used to be taught over the course of two semesters, but it has been reduced to one
semester only. The courses are now taught as a 45-minute lecture and 45-minute
seminar. Only one teacher (T1) teaches the course over two semesters, but
teachers generally declared the average length of the weekly lessons with students
to be 90 minutes.
The second change reported by T4 is the change in the objectives and the name
of the course.
“Everything has changed. We had to change the scope from most theoretically
issues towards more practical issues. […] basically, the two objectives I just
mentioned that improving their pronunciation, on one hand, giving the theoretical
background, on the other hand, so we had to switch from the theoretical background
towards the practical issues and improving students’ pronunciation. Gradually, over
the past few years, phonetics has become an interesting issue because, somehow, I
feel a connection with phonetics, […] students are inherently scared or horrified by
the [terminology of the] Latin origin primarily which comes from phonetics”.
The third change was reported by T8 – the course changed its status from a
compulsory one to an elective course.
“The pronunciation [course] was in the first year, now it's moved, now it's in the
second year. And unfortunately, it's an elective course, because it was compulsory,
but two years ago our faculty decided to change programs to a modular system,
something like that, so phonetics was suddenly compulsory, but it became an elective
subject, which has its advantages and disadvantages”.
Although the T8 claims their colleagues empathise with him and there are plans
to shift to make the course compulsory again, the teacher sees the positives of the
change of the course to the elective one in attracting only students who are
motivated, so the teacher can explore deeper spheres of the discipline and make
personal progress as a teacher.
These claims suggest that there is a universal trend to make changes in study
programs at universities based on the departure from the traditional theoretical
programs with theoretical subjects to practically oriented study programs with
subjects that would reflect the current needs of the labour market and provide the
graduates with a set of practical skills that could be directly used to resolve tasks
in everyday professional lives.
2. What are the teachers’ attitudes to teaching pronunciation or phonetics and
phonology? How was their relationship to the course in the beginning and how have
they changed?
Teachers at lower levels of education often claim they do not like teaching
pronunciation; however, even though most of the university teachers of phonetics
33
and phonology felt positive about the disciplines when they had been students
themselves (T1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8). T5 started to like the course because of their teacher:
“I liked the subject or I liked [my teacher], and what happened was I took all of
her phonetics and phonology classes and she started to mock me for my wrong
pronunciation […] somehow there was chemistry working between [my teacher] and
me, I liked her way of teaching […]. The fact that she kept making fun of me made me
motivated to get rid of all these wrong pronunciations.”
This example of good practice can have an impact on the students and can also
change the attitude of teachers.
T7 changed their attitude to the course after they started teaching it. As a
student, the teacher perceived the course as a theoretical subject that was a part
of the curriculum; however, after realising how important, but neglected, the
pronunciation is in education.
Other attitudes of the teachers include respect for the discipline:
“It was very positive for me, although from the beginning, as with every student,
I was a little frightened by the technical issues and terminology and so on, because
the phonetics is a little different from other subjects. I'm not saying it's easier, harder,
better, worse, but it's a little different.” (T1)
T2) could relate it to music and it was logical to them however, these attitudes
had changed once the teachers started teaching the courses and could see its
impact on communication. Additionally, teacher 4 claims:
“You get to the other side of the classroom and then you start getting totally
different difficulties like how do you explain things you already understand to people
who don't. How do you make them interested in things you are interested in
inherently and do not need any explanation to why these issues are exciting at all and
you need to try to motivate them, and […] how you actually teach pronunciation so
that's where this kind of methodological issue came up.”
Teachers also claim that before they started teaching phonetics and phonology,
they hadn’t been fully aware of the extent of the impact of pronunciation in the
language. The actual teaching practice of the course helped them develop a deeper
understanding of language and raised their awareness in the sphere of phonetics.
3. What is the importance of pronunciation/phonetics and phonology according
to the teachers?
The teachers univocally claim the importance of pronunciation and the course
of phonetics and phonology and over the course of the interview could provide
countless examples of the importance a good pronunciation impacting
communication typical for their languages (e.g. a bed day - a bad day, T5). In this
respect, they view pronunciation superior to other aspects of language (grammar,
vocabulary) in speaking.
“It gives the impression of good language skill. When you open your mouth, the
first thing that gets noticed is your pronunciation. If you have problems with your
34
grammar, vocab or anything, all of them are secondary in terms of how quickly other
speakers can notice. That’s one thing. And the other thing is that having good
pronunciation, even hides problems, if you have problems, with other language skills,
you may have very bad vocabulary. But if you have good pronunciation, other people
may not notice”. (T5)
Even so, teachers admit their nonsensical stigmatisation of people with a
foreign accent (T6) but take into consideration physical and physiological limits of
speakers (T4). Teachers also admit little evidence for this conclusion but claim to
have had experience with such speakers.
“I never thought about it like that, although it is not the rule, mostly students who
were competent in the lexical and syntactic level, had decent pronunciation”, adding
that “I had a couple of students who sounded very natural, very native-like, but
basically, when I listened to what they were talking about, the choice of collocations
was wrong, the grammar isn't always perfect, so it's ... that's otherwise interesting
that so far, until you said it, I have not thought about it. But it would make sense
because it is, to some extent, separate.” (T2)
Overall, teachers believe that good pronunciation is very important part of
communication that has priority in speech and has an impact on the first
impression the speakers make; however, they are aware of the limitations of
foreign learners.
4. What are the teachers’ preferences regarding teaching particular
pronunciation issues?
The teachers claimed generally liking all aspects but majority of them tended
to prefer segmental issues. Teachers also admitted that teaching segmentals was
their personal choice (T4). One of the reasons was the fact that they seem to be
more logical (T2 and 3). Only teacher 7 preferred the bottom-up approach, as
suprasegmental phonology, contains of all other pronunciation aspects and the
method “teaching through suprasegmentals” is popular among the students.
“I prefer, and I think it's better to focus on the suprasegmental level, that is,
practice accent, rhythm, intonation, but basically what they're doing, that ... we don't
practice pronunciation in class, there are no drill exercises, […] there is basically
everything, there is the pronunciation of vowels, consonants, connecting the syllables,
the suprasegmental level, there is everything. But I think the suprasegmental level is
more important”. (T7)
In terms of confidence, the participating teachers are aware of their own
pronunciation limits, but they do not prevent them from teaching pronunciation.
However, the teachers’ confidence in teaching pronunciation or the lack of thereof
is related to two reasons – first, the amount of time does not allow them to practice
all features equally:

35
 “Maybe intonation. I mean, it's a kind of blind spot, but probably because you
don't really get to it. You first deal with segmental stuff and then maybe stress and
then you run out of time and you don't get to talk about intonation.” (T6)
The other reason would be their inability to pronounce a feature native-like:
“If there is something I have very little confidence in, it’s those aspects of English
pronunciation in which I can’t do perfectly, because they are, I believe, impossible to
learn unless you are a native speaker, for example, aspiration. I’ve never been able to
make sure that my word-initial voiceless stops are more aspirated than word medial
voiceless stops”. (T5)
Two teachers (T2 and 5) claimed the importance of their colleagues in gaining
the confidence to teach pronunciation.
“I don't think I had enough training, also because I had those phonetics classes in my
first year of study, that is, four years before I started teaching, so I would have been
very pleased if I had had some guidance, and I only received some guidance when
I joined this department and had a colleague who was in a senior position so
of course I could consult with, but because it was not until 8 years after I joined in
general to a teaching position, so it seemed to me that I should probably already
know those things and that I would not need to ask her such questions, so I was
looking for it in the available literature, and so on., so I would certainly have been
pleased if I had been better trained.” (T2)
On the other hand, T 5, who, as already mentioned, started to be interested in
pronunciation issues due to the positive impact of their former teacher, reattended
the classes after they had started teaching at the university, and could “enjoy” the
classes and get an even deeper understanding of the issues at hand.
None of the participating teachers think a native speaker should be the only
teacher of pronunciation. On the contrary, the word “overrated” (T1) or its
synonym appeared in the utterance of more than one teacher. Non-native teachers
of pronunciation, especially having the same linguistic background as their
learners, can explain pronunciation features to their learners for two possible
reasons – firstly, because native speakers are generally not aware of the features
of their own native language, because they acquire it naturally, without theoretical
explanation, and secondly because the teachers dealt with the same issues when
learning pronunciation and can build their teaching upon their own experience.
However, their role is important as good models for its teaching (T4). Teacher 2,
whose husband is a native speaker, helped her to improve her own pronunciation
by correcting her mistakes, pointing at pronunciation peculiarities and having an
overall good influence on her pronunciation skills. However, the only possible
exception the teachers provided was a native speaker trained in pronunciation
teaching can be a good teacher of pronunciation.
5. What are the aims of the courses the teachers teach?

36
 The participating teachers specified the goals of their course according to the
nature of the discipline, but they shared their view on the general purpose of the
course – to familiarise the students with the basic terminology of phonetics and
phonology, sounds of English, description of pronunciation principles and rules,
information of the patterns of the English pronunciation and the use of the IPA.
These goals apply to both, theoretical lectures and practical seminars. Therefore,
their discipline is of the linguistic nature and should develop a more profound
understanding of a language. The teachers also agreed that even though it is not
the primary goal of their course, attention to pronunciation mistakes of the
learners must be paid. They encounter students with basic pronunciation mistakes
– articulation of incorrect phonemes, incorrect stress placement, mispronounced
words (e.g. determine, focus). Only T3 has a corrective element embedded
explicitly in their course.
As a result of the pedagogical efforts, the learners should acquire intelligible
pronunciation with minimal interference of the mother tongue.
“I think there are 2 two goals of an English major [students]. On one hand […], the
goals of English majors [students] are not the same as an average language learner
so they're not simply learners of English language, but something special, something
extra. So, they're expected to be familiar with pronunciation issues as I've already
mentioned, even if they are unable to use these pronunciation features in their own
English, they're supposed to be able to recognise them, name them […] and describe
these pronunciation features. Of course, knowing about pronunciation features does
not only help in your production of English but it helps, perhaps even more, in
comprehension.” (T4)
This statement summarises the pronunciation goal for English majors, who are
different from other learners and users of English. Familiarisation with native
accents is also very important for translators, i.e. what to expect to hear from
native speakers.
6. Which pronunciation model do the teachers prefer?
Pronunciation models play a very important role in pronunciation learning.
Recently, pronunciation models have been a subject of discussion in literature, but
in the classrooms, traditional prestige accents RP or BBC English serve as a
common ground for all participants. The only exception is T1, who prefers and
teaches General American. T7 also uses RP as a point of reference in their course,
but their students can choose which of the two varieties they want to practice and
are encouraged to train the accent they are familiar with, especially if the students
have an authentic experience with the accent.
Concerning the students’ preferences, teachers notice the shift in the trends
among the students – while in the past, British accents were popular, now teachers
perceive the growing interest of learners in American accents. The investigation
into the preferences was made by teacher 8 in a diploma thesis:
37
 “We had a diploma thesis about it, about 30% of students prefer British, the rest
prefer American. Gimson calls it Amalgam English or someone called it mid-Atlantic
English. But students mix their pronunciation, which should be consistent, so maybe
even those who have such a mix can be helped to have a cleaner American one if they
want to… This is interesting, now that the course is elective, it seems to me that I have
more who want the British”. (T8)
On the other hand, T3 observed:
“They prefer, or what I notice, in the end their pronunciation is such a levelled
model that if we have the scale, on one hand, British and on the other American, the
whole spectrum on both sides, then they seem to reduce certain traits, one or the
other, and those who tend prefer American English sometimes somehow mix up
somehow”. (T3)
Teachers also notice students with poor pronunciation often claim they want
to develop their own accent.
7. What practices do the teachers include in their lessons?
When asked about the specific classroom practices, teachers universally noted
their classes being different from the general language improvement classes. Their
classes reflect the theoretical nature of the subject and is less oriented on the
conventional classroom techniques.
As an example, T4 suggests:
“I’m trying to keep track of what [students] have at their disposal in their
everyday lives what their cultural setting is, and then bring in certain elements of
their characters into the classrooms. […] I like making reference to social media for
example and use resources from popular social media. I try to follow the
development, as in terms of memes and popular jokes and again cultural issues but
again it's getting harder and harder”.
The teacher sees difficulties “in finding common ground with students in terms
of the relevance of the materials, as the popular culture is very diverse and, because
examples require the familiarity with the context of the joke, the joke can sometimes
be lost on the students” and adds: “You need humour in your life, whatever you do,
whatever you deal with, you have to find the humour in it, so I constantly joke, I bring
in puns, I make my own puns I improvise in my classes”. (T4)
When students see the impact of pronunciation on communication in their
everyday lives, they appreciate the information they receive in the classes. This
appreciation is mostly provided by in-service teachers (T5 and 7). Otherwise,
students are shy (T6) to express their opinion. The rising interest in pronunciation
and its popularity among students IS EVIDENT by the annually increasing number
of bachelor and diploma theses apply for BY STUDENTS (T7).
Participating teachers were asked to rate the traditional pronunciation
improving techniques in terms of their usefulness. Generally, the teachers found

38
many techniques useful for specific purposes and if applied correctly. The teachers
were generally least keen to practice minimal pairs but could provide countless
examples for the materials they used. The majority of teachers relied upon or
supplemented textbooks with authentic materials, which often made up to 50% of
classroom material. Teachers also compiled their own textbooks (T4, 5, 7) or
collected unpublished material they preferred using in the classroom in contrast
to traditional textbooks.
T1 prefers communicative approach:
“Well, apart from those classic drills and repetitions and so on, again, I'm going
from that communicative approach, so a lot of pair work, a lot of group work, where
they have the opportunity to practice it, or then point each other out in a good way,
a positive example of some mistakes that can be changed, that can be improved,
because of doing these exercises, pair work, group work”. (T1)
Phonetic transcription was very important for teacher 6 and 8. However,
teachers split their views on the communicative aspect of their classes – while T1
was a strong proponent of communicative teaching of pronunciation, T4 and 8
believed these techniques primarily belong to language improvement classes.
For improvement outside the class, T3 recommends:
“For example, it worked for me - if you know a book, you have read it more than
once, you no longer have to deal with the lexical context, the understanding of the
text, you can buy audiobooks on the Internet now for a few pennies, some even
recorded that some are free, so you start listening, but listen with such knowledge
that you are not listening to words, you are listening to that sound”. (T3)
8. What is the opinion of university teachers on the quality of pronunciation
instruction on lower levels of education?
Most teachers had experience with teaching at lower levels at certain points of
their career but teachers admit being guilty of not paying enough attention to
pronunciation at lower levels of education themselves (I fell into the same trap as
all teachers, T4), or did not approach the pupils the same way they would approach
university teachers (I enjoyed their little interpretations, T6), or did not see the
point in teaching it (T7). Only teachers 1 and 3 devoted classroom time to
pronunciation instruction, using supplementary material to support the exercises
in each students’ book.
There are two views on the quality of students coming to universities – the
majority of teachers believe the average student is less and less proficient in
pronunciation, even if exceptions apply. The majority of students make basic
pronunciation mistakes at the segmental and suprasegmental level, and also make
mistakes in the pronunciation of individual words (e.g. determine, focus, preface).
Students make these mistakes even if they had never heard these mispronounced
words from the teachers; however, these mistakes are the easiest to improve (T3).

39
 On the other hand, T7 can see the improved quality of students’ pronunciation
and provides two reasons – authentic English-speaking experience of students
with different accents during their travels and the time spent on the Internet,
making those students second language learners of English.
One of the teachers makes a direct relation between bad pronunciation of the
learners and their teacher, especially the teachers of very young learners, based
on their own experience.
“Of course, it's clear with children. I practiced pronunciation with my son and
then he came home from school and started saying things differently from what we
practiced, because of the influence of classmates and teachers. He cannot criticise the
teacher. The impact at a younger age, from teachers and classmates, is very strong
and it is interesting that the influence of teachers and classmates is so strong that a
good pronunciation turns into a bad one, and that fascinates me”. (T8)
According to teachers, older students report no or little training of
pronunciation in the classroom, especially suprasegmentals, which contradicts
with the findings of Bodorík (2017) according to which more than half of the
teachers regularly include pronunciation training techniques into their lessons.
This suggests that the perception of a pronunciation exercise differs between
students and teachers.
When students come to university, often their physical abilities do not allow
them to fully acquire target sounds of English and T3 claims that if teachers started
with learners at a younger age, they would not have pronunciation problems when
they come to university. Even if the teachers try to correct some of the mistakes,
the physiological limits are stronger than cognitive abilities of learners and they
can only improve to a certain extent.
Younger learners can benefit from different types of pronunciation exercises
and improvement tasks more than older learners, but a learner of any age can
make progress. A key factor, according to teachers, is motivation. Teacher 8 adds
that, paradoxically, since their course became elective, the students became more
motivated, are generally better than average students and the teacher him/herself
can make progress. The same idea from a different perspective was expressed by
teacher 2 who claimed they teach so many students they feel they cannot progress
anymore.
One of the questions regarded the suggestions that could be made in
pronunciation teaching. Majority of teachers suggested earlier practice and
improvement of teachers’ pronunciation, however, one of the teachers suggested:
“One change can solve this. In [my country], teacher salaries should be tripled,
and if the salary is tripled, then the prestige of the profession could come back.
Probably, the teaching profession is one of the lowest paid jobs in my country. […] I
wouldn’t suggest any other types of changes, because I don’t like to solve the
problems on the surface, I like to find the root of the problem”. (T6)
40
 This statement suggests the quality of pronunciation instruction does not
depend solely on the teachers, learners or the instruction itself, but the problem
extends beyond classroom practices.
9. What effect has pronunciation training/teaching phonetics and phonology had
on their students?
Students often take the course of phonetics and phonology only as a part of
their studies, as an independent discipline they have to pass and move on to
another discipline (T7). From the perspective of teachers, they often work with
students in a limited capacity and do not meet the same student again throughout
their studies, or teach so many students that they are unable to recollect the
performances of individual students if they meet them at later stages of their study
program; therefore, the participants could not provide results of longitudinal
studies on the effect of pronunciation instruction on their students’ performances.
However, teachers noticed and could recollect long term effect on those who are
motivated (T2,3) and who practice after they complete the course (T7). Teachers
also believe some students are not able to improve their pronunciation, for which
they assign a lack of motivation; however, they all believe pronunciation can be
trained and improved at any age, even if it does not reach native-like quality.

The final section of the interview was an open question during which the
teachers could express the thoughts the interview questions did not cover or give
advice to the teachers. The teachers either expressed the questions covered all the
main points of teaching phonetics and phonology or expressed their enthusiasm
about the fact investigation in this field is being done.
“Perhaps I would just like to express my pleasure that someone is doing this, and
I believe that your results will be beneficial and that they will pay more attention
than before, especially to those high schools and primary schools and will have more
time allotted for at universities”. (T2)
Generally, teachers said they shared their expertise within the questions they
were asked. Finally, teacher 6 gave the final piece of advice upon the request of the
interviewer: “I think that you don't have to teach everything you just said it's much
more important that you show why what you're teaching is interesting and let the
students follow their own instincts” (T6).
This piece of advice from the most experienced teacher, in terms of what could
give the teacher encouragement, is that even if the teachers do not have time or
confidence to teach all pronunciation features, students mostly appreciate
teachers who are enthusiastic about their course and can provide them with key
aspects of the subject matter.

41
 3.4 Discussion and conclusions
Teachers of phonetics and phonology participating in the interview had a
slightly different background from participants from other studies discussed in
section 3.1 in terms of their field of expertise – while teachers in the referenced
studies were teachers from general schools, all teachers participating in this
research attempt taught pronunciation besides other courses, such as other
linguistic disciplines, teaching methodology, dialectology, orthography or culture,
which allowed them to look at issues concerning teaching pronunciation from
different perspectives.
Their responses to the research questions can be formulated as follows:
Q1: The organisational conditions of teachers of phonetics and phonology have
changed in recent times – the weekly load for teaching has been reduced from four
hours per week to two hours per week, or has been reduced from two semesters
to one semester. In addition, to make the study programme more practical, the
scope and the name of the course had to be changed, as well as its nature from
compulsory to elective in one university.
Q2: The relationship of teachers towards the subject is positive; however, not
all teachers were as enthusiastic about the subject as they are now. The teachers
who have changed their attitude towards the subject benefited from examples of
good practice of pronunciation teaching or the importance of pronunciation in
communication. With teaching practice, the confidence of teachers has grown and
new problems, mostly methodological, appeared and had to be addressed.
Q3: Teachers view the course of phonetics and phonology dealing with
pronunciation as equally important as other linguistic disciplines, as speech is
primary to writing and good pronunciation skills are important in forming the first
impression of the speaker. According to teachers, incorrect pronunciation can
highlight other mistakes in speaking, as well as form prejudices towards the
speakers; therefore, must be taught systematically and should not be neglected at
any level of English language teaching.
Q4: The majority of teachers participating claimed to model their courses
according to their own preferences to some extent. The majority of teachers prefer
dealing with segmental issues; however, the top-down approach was appreciated
by one of the teachers.
Q5: The aims of the courses of phonetics and phonology are mostly theoretical
and not directly related to pronunciation improvement of the participants, even if
a corrective element had to be included into practical seminars to a certain extent
due to the quality of pronunciation of the students the teachers teach. The goals of
the course mostly lie in providing the students with such knowledge that would
allow them to familiarise with critical features of pronunciation, recognise them
42
and articulate them within the students’ abilities, be knowledgeable of
pronunciation features of prestigious English accents and be able to use phonetic
transcription for educational purposes.
Q6: Although the overall tendency to intelligibility has been observed as the
goal of pronunciation instruction, the teachers participating still relate their
classes on the prestigious native models of English – predominantly RP and in one
case GA; however, teachers also appreciate other native models of English and
recommend the students to familiarise with them as this knowledge would allow
them to communicate with native and non-native speakers more efficiently.
Q7: Since the nature of the course is academic and theoretical, teachers
predominantly employ those techniques to their classes that would allow the
students to recognise and classify the pronunciation features discussed. They
mostly perceive the communicative approach to be predominantly indented for
general language improvement classes; however, all of them claim that all of the
traditional pronunciation training techniques can be beneficial for the learners.
Although some of the teachers relied on textbooks, a number of teachers relied on
authentic materials to engage students with materials from their context.
Q8: The majority of the teachers had experience with teaching English at other
types of schools than universities; however, most of them claim to pay little to no
attention to pronunciation. The rest of the teachers would rely on additional
textbook materials. On the other hand, teachers can evaluate the quality of
pronunciation of their students, who make noticeable mistakes based on incorrect
use of speech sounds that could have been easily avoided if pronunciation had
been taught earlier. According to the teachers, students often report little attention
paid to pronunciation at lower levels of educations. In addition, one of the teachers
provided an example of the impact of the incorrect pronunciation of a teacher on
a young learner.
Q9: With regard to the impact of the pronunciation instruction on the learners,
they could recall improvement of motivated learners who work on their
pronunciation beyond the classes of phonetics and phonology long term and short-
term effect of pronunciation instruction in class; however, outside the class they
often observe mistakes in pronunciation of their students. Furthermore, teachers
report a lack of contact with students in later years of their studies to provide more
relevant data.

As already suggested, the presented data collected by interviews are not

particularly comparable to data collected by teachers from regular schools;
however, certain trends can be observed.
The data collected are in direct opposition to findings of Macdonald (2000),
Foote et al. (2016) or Buss (2015), who discussed pronunciation teaching issues

43
with reluctant teachers who lack confidence or feel underprepared to teach
pronunciation.
Conversely, certain similarities can be found between studies by Munro et al.
(2006) who found out teachers are not immune to form prejudices against
speakers with non-native accents, even if they are aware of these prejudices.
Similar to Koike (2016), the participating teachers were all non-native teachers,
therefore preferred more direct pronunciation instruction in comparison to native
speaking teachers from Koike’s study. However, this difference may be also rooted
in the fact that the nature of the subjects – phonetics and phonology and language
improvement classes - is fundamentally different and equal comparisons cannot
be made. With regard to preference of teaching individual segments and
suprasegmental teachers, the teachers participating confirmed claims of Uchida &
Sugimodo (2016) of preference to teach segments rather than suprasegmentals.
Finally, as Szyszka (2016) suggested regarding the Polish learners from education
of lower levels, the teachers participating confirmed that the actual teaching
improves not only teachers’ pronunciation, but also their confidence to teach it.
On the basis of the collected responses, the interviews gave an optimistic
message to teachers of English who are reluctant to teach pronunciation. The
teachers participating formulated the recommendations to in-service teachers
that relation to pronunciation can be built by including meaningful pronunciation
techniques and tasks in communicative activities to point at the importance of
pronunciation in communication for the leaners. In addition, teachers can improve
their teaching skills with a professional support system provided by colleagues or
other experts. In class, the amount of information should not overwhelm teachers,
as they can concentrate on the aspects, they find relevant for their learners.
Teaching brings confidence and experience that teachers often need; therefore,
teachers will not gain confidence unless they start teaching pronunciation. The
repertoire of available approaches and strategies to pronunciation teaching is
accessible; teachers should benefit from it to meet the needs of their learners.
As an objective for further research into the pronunciation teaching issues, the
needs of teachers could be investigated to provide them with appropriate teaching
materials.

44
 4 Pre-service teachers’ attitudes to learning
pronunciation

Pre-service teachers are a very important part of pronunciation teaching – they

are not fully qualified teachers yet, but they will teach pronunciation to the future
generation of learners. Even if they do not have the authentic experience with
teaching, they understand the language more profoundly than regular speakers of
English.

4.1 Overview of the pre-service teachers’ opinions

In introduction, pre-service teachers’ attitudes to accents, teaching practices
and learning strategies will be discussed.
Munro, Derwing and Sato (2006) analysed research papers on foreign accent
perception among native speakers to help pre-service teachers with
familiarisation with the impact of accents. The impact of a foreign accent in
communication with native speakers is undeniable and the authors provide
examples of consequences foreign learners of English face due to their non-native
pronunciation, one of them being “negative social evaluation“ (p. 68), that results
in, for instance, hiring only native-speaking teachers of English, considering
foreign-accented speakers as less suitable for high-status jobs or the existence of
accent reduction courses accented speakers can attend. Also, native speakers take
note of their native accents. The authors tried to design a consciousness-raising
activity for pre-service teachers who regularly observe foreign accents in their
classrooms but are not aware of the full impact of the role of the accent outside the
classroom setting. Even if teachers generally embrace diversity, they can still hold
subconscious prejudices against the accented speakers. Munro et al. claim that
raising the awareness of teachers would be only beneficial for teachers and their
learners. The design included the following steps: (1) collection of suitable
accented samples, (2) evaluation of the accents presented to the pre-service
teachers and (3) discussion the results with pre-service teachers.
Kang (2010) investigated the attitudes of second language learners towards
pronunciation. The results indicated there is a difference in attitude towards
45
native accents – a higher number of participants from New Zealand did not want
to speak as native speakers in comparison to learners in the US. In addition,
teachers may regard their own accent as the only correct accent for pronunciation
instruction.
Coskum (2011) studied the attitudes of Turkish pre-service teachers to EIL
(English as an international language) pronunciation. The questionnaire
concentrated on attitudes towards pronunciation and accent. The collected data
indicate that the majority of participants had adopted a Standard American accent,
followed by Standard British and “a type of Turkish-English”. The reasons for
adaptation of the accents were equally established between the identification with
the country and its availability as a school model (N=26). Its aesthetic preference
was identified by 19 respondents. In terms of pronunciation importance, an equal
number of participants regard pronunciation as a very important part of school
studies and view native-like pronunciation as important. Intelligible
pronunciation is viewed as very important by 37 respondents. In a comparison of
the pronunciation teaching goals – 41 participants claim its goal is native-like
pronunciation, clear and intelligible pronunciation is important for 46
participants. In another set of questions, 27 participants agree with exposure to
different varieties of English, but only 12 participants agree with learning a non-
native variety of accent. In terms of communication with native speakers, 30
participants would accept a faint non-native accent and with non-native speakers,
29 participants would accept a faint non-native accent.
In Poland, Janicka, Kul & Weckwerth (2005) investigated the attitudes of 240
Polish learners of English to native English accents. The students majoring in
English claimed they preferred the accent they could relate to, describing
American accent as more modern (e.g. dynamic, business-like, relaxed) and easier
to learn, and British accents as more traditional (e.g. unspoiled, proper, classy,
serious, aristocratic, academic, more authentic etc.), and therefore perceived as a
challenge for the learners. Generally, the learners followed, and wanted to follow,
in the future of the model that they had been presented in the previous years of
their studies. The learners viewed the British model as one that benefited from the
geographical proximity, however, due to globalisation, students also pointed at the
accessibility of American models in music or films. From all of the participants,
only 5 students claimed pronunciation instruction was not necessary, because
they appreciated the importance of intelligibility and factors restricting achieving
native-like pronunciation. One of the participants also raised the need to have
pronunciation training in an academic setting, but not in general use, which
corresponds with the opinions of teachers in Chapter 3 of this publication. The rest
of the respondents perceived pronunciation instruction as “extremely important”
(p. 257). Most of the participants prefer teaching the pronunciation model they

46
were familiar with, although Australian, Canadian, Scottish, Welsh, Irish and
Jamaican varieties were also proposed as possible models.
Similarly, Dalton-Puffer et al. (1997) identified the preference of native accents
in Austrian learners of English and negative attitude to the Austrian non-native
accent of English. Furthermore, Hanzlíková & Skarnitzl (2017) identified
prejudices of non-native speakers towards accents of other non-native speakers of
English.
According to Burri et al. (2017) compared the cognition of pre-service and in-
service teachers on teaching pronunciation. While pre-service teachers lack the
confidence to teach pronunciation, in-service teachers can include pronunciation
improvement activities into their already existing teaching skills. However, both
groups would not teach pronunciation as an integral part of their course but would
devote a specific amount of time in each class to teach pronunciation separately
from other layers of language. They also add that pre-service teachers are often
influenced by the teaching style of their own teachers, therefore continuing to use
controlled techniques to teach pronunciation.
Pre-service teachers, like in-service teachers, can be reluctant to teach
pronunciation. According to Suárez & Basto Basto (2017), the pre-service
teachers’ attitudes towards teaching individual aspects of language, including
pronunciation, can change after completion of a 10-week language teaching
practice. The authors observed two teacher trainees and identified the main
drivers of the change as the personal experience in the classroom and the
subsequent personal change. While the students claimed that teaching grammar is
not difficult and teaching pronunciation is, after the course, they expressed
changes in their attitudes. The change in teaching pronunciation was caused by the
application of a three-step sequence of using flashcards that were used for the
formal introduction of the word (orthography, meaning, pronunciation) and
guessing.
Akyol (2013) investigated the preference of Turkish pre-service teachers in the
application of language learning strategies based on Oxford’s (1990) classification.
The study investigated learning pronunciation by a control and experimental
group participating in a specialised course. The data indicate that the learners used
all six type of strategies, the most frequently used were cooperation, memory and
affective strategies, the least frequently used were cognitive, metacognitive and
compensation strategies.
In Slovakia, Vančová (2017) investigated the views of pre-service teachers (N
= 19) on English pronunciation. The participants filled out a questionnaire with a
5-point Likert scale as a part of the feedback after passing a two-semester course
of English phonetics and phonology. Only two participants claimed to have
previous experience with pronunciation training; the significant majority of
students had never experienced a systematic approach to raising the awareness to
47
pronunciation issues in English (N = 14, 3 students expressed a neutral opinion).
This directly contradicts to findings of Bodorík (2017), Datko (2013) and Metruk
(2020), who all claimed to interview teachers who regularly teach pronunciation.
The participants all agreed on the importance of pronunciation and they express
their wish to improve it; they see their goal of pronunciation in intelligibility and
are comfortable with having an accent.
Similarly, Metruk (2020) interviewed 36 pre-service teachers from Slovakia.
The majority of the interviewees viewed pronunciation teaching as important as
grammar and vocabulary teaching, and the majority of them also regarded
segmental and suprasegmental issues as equal aspects of pronunciation to be
taught; however, they viewed segmental issues easier to teach than the
suprasegmentals.

4.2 Research method, questions and sampling

For the research attempt, the quantitative-qualitative questionnaire survey
was selected as the appropriate method for data collection. The questionnaire was
aimed at the students and graduates of a Department of English language and
literature in Slovakia and was based on published studies by to compare the
collected data and provide a comparative study of the attitudes of the respondents
in a global context. The questionnaire was titled “What do you think about teaching
English pronunciation?” (Čo si myslíte o vyučovaní anglickej výslovnosti?) (Appendix
3) and was formulated in the Slovak language on the basis of recommendations of
Gavora (2010) and Scott & Usher (2011).
The questionnaire contained four major sections:
1. background information investigating the status of participants to the
department, years of studying English, years of teaching experience (if
applicable), the highest level of formal education in English achieved, the
relationship to English (mother or second language)
2. a 20-item questionnaire with a 5- point Likert scale
3. semi-open questions regarding students’ attitudes to accents of English
(native and non-native) and ways of practising pronunciation, as well as their
comments and suggestions

The questionnaire was aimed at answering the following research questions:

1) Do the students consider teaching pronunciation important?
2) According to the students, what is the goal of teaching pronunciation – native or
intelligible pronunciation?
3) What variant of English pronunciation do the students prefer?
4) Are the students satisfied with their previous pronunciation education?
48
5) Which pronunciation practice method do the students consider most effective?
(Which worked for them?)
6) How do they see their future pedagogical work in this area?

The questionnaire was published at survio.com on the 25th of June 2020 and
the participating students of the department were invited to answer directly via
email. The questionnaire was also advertised on the department website, as well
as on its Facebook page. In addition, the announcement on the questionnaire data
collection was advertised on the Facebook pages of the students and teachers of
English in Slovakia and their opinion was also welcome. The first data were
collected the first day of the announcement and the last entry was recorded on the
30th of July. The highest number of answers was collected after the announcement
with decreasing intensity towards the end of data collection. The questionnaire
was visited by 214 potential participants; 117 of them completed the
questionnaire; therefore, the return rate of the questionnaire was 54.7%.

Participants and sampling

The questionnaire was intended primarily for the students and graduates of
the department, who were training to be future professional English users, pre-
service teachers. They were selected as a convenient sample available to the
researcher and were chosen as the target group of the questionnaire due to their
unique position. On one hand, they were being professionally trained to become
teachers and participated in the course of phonetics and phonology, on the other
hand, their teaching experience was limited or even non-existent. Therefore, their
answers reflect their experience from the previous years of studying English and
may bring an insight into their future teaching practices, i.e. to suggest the possible
future teaching practices of pronunciation instruction in Slovakia.

Table 1: Participants' relation to the Department

Answer Answers Percentage
student of the 1st year Bachelor programme 35 30.4 %
student of the 2nd year Bachelor programme 23 20 %
student of the 3rd year Bachelor programme 14 12.2 %
student of the 1st year Master programme 12 10.4 %
student of the 2nd year Master programme 2 1.7 %
the department graduate 10 8.7 %
in-service teacher 15 13.0 %
49
 applicant 0 0%
other 5 4.3 %

Of all participants, 64.7% were the current students of the department (N = 86)
and additional 10 participants were the department graduates. The data indicate
that with the growing level of studies, fewer and fewer current students
participated in the questionnaire. One of the possible reasons why only two
students of the second year of the Master’s programme participated could be that
those students, at the time of the data collection, had already completed their
studies. As a result, they might have not checked their faculty email accounts, the
accounts could have been already closed or they did not check the website or social
media advertising the questionnaire. Most participants were first-year students
(N = 35); therefore, they are the closest to their high school studies and best recall
the role of pronunciation in the classes of English and could compare the course of
phonetics and phonology at the university.
The respondents from the category “Other” (N=4) specified their role as a
teacher of English, teacher trainer, two teachers (unspecified) and one participant
declared to have no relationship to the department.
Most of the participants were foreign learners of English (N = 80; 68.4%), 35
participants (29.9%) characterised themselves as second language learners and
only two native speakers (1.7%) took part in the research.
According to the information the participants shared in open question number
3, they had studied English for 16.9 years on average. All participants declared to
have taken Maturita exam in English; 17 participants were holders of an
international language certificate, 49 participants passed state exams and 6 had
other type of education (i.e. a bachelor degree in teaching English language and
literature, C1 Business English, other programme at the faculty of Education, or
non-specified university degree).
Teaching experience of the participants (question number 5) varied – the
highest score received the answer “none – I just study English” (47.9%), and 25.6%
of participants teach English privately. From the total number of participants,
30.8% claimed to teach English. The participants with teaching practice varied –
the majority of them claimed to have experience from multiple types of schools,
one participant was a teacher/trainer. Three participants claimed to have other
experience with English – had taught English part-time, taught teaching
methodology or took part in the questionnaire due to its interesting topic.
The majority of the respondents were sufficiently formally qualified in English
to provide relevant opinions on the issue, as only 6 participants (5.1%) declared
other education, often related to English (none official, finished university studies

50
(2x), master studies at another university, C1 Business English and bachelor
degree in teaching English language and literature).

4.3 Results
After investigating the background information of the questionnaire
participants, the analysis of their responses was conducted.
The first item was a list of 20 statements where the participants expressed their
attitude to them on a 5-point Likert scale (1) Strongly agree; (2) agree; (3) Neither
agree nor disagree; (4) disagree; (5) Strongly disagree.
Table 2: Students' attitudes toward the statements
1 2 3 4 5 Average
score
1. Pronunciation is important 78 31 3 (2.6 %) 3 (2.6 %) 2 1.46
in foreign language (66.7 %) (26.5 %) (1.7 %)
communication.
2. I am aware of my 56 39 12 7 3 1.82
pronunciation when I speak a (47.9 %) (33.3 %) (10.3 %) (6.0 %) (2.6 %)
foreign language.
3. I want to improve my 85 23 2 4 3 1.43
pronunciation in a foreign (72.6 %) (19.7 %) (1.7 %) (3.4 %) (2.6 %)
language.
4. The aim of the pronunciation 31 51 19 13 3 2.19
training is native-like (26.5 %) (43.6 %) (16.2 %) (11.1 %) (2.6 %)
pronunciation.
5. If I had better pronunciation, 53 30 19 9 6 2.01
I would be more confident in (45.3 %) (25.6 %) (16.2 %) (7.7 %) (5.1 %)
English.
6. I think that my current 21 52 30 9 5 2.35
pronunciation is good. (17.9 %) (44.4 %) (25.6 %) (7.7 %) (4.3 %)
7. I think teaching 4 12 25 45 31 3.72
pronunciation at primary and (3.4 %) (10.3 %) (21.4 %) (38.5 %) (26.5 %)
lower secondary schools is at a
good level.
8. I think teaching 6 21 39 35 16 3.29
pronunciation at higher (5.1 %) (17.9 %) (33.3 %) (29.9 %) (13.7 %)
secondary schools is at a good
level.
9. I think English textbooks 6 14 28 42 27 3.59
provide sufficient material for (5.1 %) (12.0 %) (23.9 %) (35.9 %) (23.1 %)
pronunciation training.

51
 10. I think my teachers 30 42 31 8 6 2.29
provided/provide me with a (25.6 %) (35.9 %) (26.5 %) (6.8 %) (5.1 %)
good pronunciation model.
11. Training English 28 46 20 22 1 2.33
pronunciation is challenging. (23.9 %) (39.3 %) (17.1 %) (18.8 %) (0.9 %)
12. I occasionally modify and 22 40 29 16 10 2.58
accommodate my (18.8 %) (34.2 %) (24.8 %) (13.7 %) (8.5 %)
pronunciation when I speak
English.
13. As a teacher, I place/will 55 52 6 3 1 1.76
place emphasis on (47.0 %) (44.4 %) (5.1 %) (2.6 %) (0.9 %)
pronunciation of my
pupils/students.
14. Training pronunciation is 65 37 8 6 1 1.04
as important as teaching (55.6 %) (31.6 %) (6.8 %) (5.1 %) (0.9 %)
grammar and vocabulary.
15. The previous way of 18 45 24 22 8 2.63
teaching pronunciation was (15.4 %) (38.5 %) (20.5 %) (18.8 %) (6.8 %)
suitable for me.
16. Training transcription 51 33 15 13 5 2.04
helped me improve my (43.6 %) (28.2 %) (12.8 %) (11.1 %) (4.3 %)
pronunciation.
17. Imitation of 62 39 9 5 2 1.76
records/songs/films. etc., (53.0 %) (33.3 %) (7.7 %) (4.3 %) (1.7 %)
helped me improve my
pronunciation.
18. Exercises based on word 39 48 19 9 2 2.03
discrimination (e.g. minimal (33.3 %) (41.0 %) (16.2 %) (7.7 %) (1.7 %)
pairs) helped me improve my
pronunciation.
19. Gap-fill task based on 27 46 30 13 1 2.27
pronunciation helped me (23.1 %) (39.3 %) (25.6 %) (11.1 %) (0.9 %)
improve my pronunciation.
20. Theoretical information on 44 42 19 9 3 2.01
pronunciation helped me (37.6 %) (35.9 %) (16.2 %) (7.7 %) (2.6 %)
realise certain pronunciation
aspects.

The statements in this item can be thematically divided into six main domains:
1. The role of pronunciation in communication (items 1, 14)
Thematically, the items 1 and 14 were connected to students’ perception of the
importance of pronunciation in communication. The data indicate that the
52
participants generally are aware of pronunciation importance 66.7% agree
strongly) and think that its role in the education process should be equal to
studying other layers and components of language (55.6% agree strongly). This
suggests that they will be willing to devote the classroom time to pronunciation
improvement activities.
2. The participants’ pronunciation evaluation (items 2, 3, 5, 6, 12)
The participants strongly agree that they are aware of their pronunciation
when they speak (item 2, 47.9%) and even higher number of participants want to
improve it (item 3, strongly agree = 72.6%). From all the participants, the majority
(45.3%) expressed a strong will to improve their pronunciation (item 5) and 44.4
% of the participants think their current pronunciation is good (item 6). In
addition, they can modify their pronunciation in different situations (item 12,
34.2%).
3. Aim of pronunciation instruction (item 4)
According to the results of item 4 of the questionnaire, 82 participants strongly
agree or agree with the statement that the aim of native-like pronunciation is the
ultimate goal of pronunciation training. The attitudes of participants to this
particular question will be closely inspected when discussing items 8 to 10 of the
main questionnaire but seem to be consistent in this respect.
4. Evaluation of previous experience of pronunciation (items 7, 8, 9, 10, 15)
Concerning teaching pronunciation at lower levels of education, the
participants generally find the pronunciation training better at high schools than
at secondary schools, but generally for both items (7 and 8) the highest score was
in the category “disagree” (45 and 35 participants respectively). The perception of
the participants with regards to the occurrence of pronunciation tasks and
exercises in textbooks is in contradiction to Pavliuk’s (2020) findings. This raises
the question whether it is caused by the fact that students claim teachers skip
pronunciation exercises in class, therefore they also overlook them; or whether
the students and teachers (and textbook writers) share the same view of what
constitutes a pronunciation exercise. However, most participants considered their
teachers as good pronunciation models. Finally, since the participants mostly
claimed pronunciation was not taught in sufficient amount or manner at lower
levels of education, the answer to question 15 relates to the pronunciation practice
part of the phonetics and phonology course. Although the main objective of the
course is not pronunciation improvement and accent reduction as such, certain
mistakes and errors must be corrected and students are introduced to selected
pronunciation teaching techniques. In that respect, the participants answered that
they viewed the pronunciation tasks as suitable to their needs.
5. The participants’ attitude towards the pronunciation as a subject of study
(item 11)

53
 Participants view English pronunciation as a difficult subject of studies (item
11), which belongs to indirect metacognitive strategies by Oxford (1990). From
the perspective of Oxford’s (1990) learning strategies, mostly the cognitive,
metacognitive and memory strategies were selected for identification of their
preference by the students participating. The students find imitation (cognitive)
the most efficient way of practicing pronunciation, followed by learning
theoretical information on pronunciation (metacognitive), minimal pairs
(cognitive), transcription (memory) and finally gap-fill tasks (cognitive) as the
least useful way of learning pronunciation.
6. Pronunciation learning strategies (items 16 to 20)
This issue of pronunciation learning strategies will also be discussed in
questions 12 and 13 (Table 4 and 5) of the questionnaire. Cognitive (items 17, 18
and 19) seem to be the most and least helpful to students; memory (item 16) and
metacognitive (item 20) strategies seem to be comparable in this particular
context.

The following section (questions 8 to 11) concentrate on the preference of

students of individual accents of English and their perception of its importance in
communication.
Questionnaire items 8-10 were presented as individual dichotomous, yes-no
questions that were thematically related – they allowed the students to formulate
their own pronunciation goals simple sentences with the possibility to provide an
explanatory comment. The items were presented in chronological order and the
participants could not preview the following question; therefore, their answers
could overlap and could agree with statements in items 8 and 9 to a certain extent;
however, they strictly refused the possible lack of pronunciation standards in their
utterances. The table 3 summarises the data for all three items.

Table 3: Participants' attitudes towards native-like and intelligible pronunciation

Answer Yes No Open answers
8. I want to sound native-like 86 29 51
9. I want to be intelligible 106 11 38
9. I am not concerned about my 8 108 37
pronunciation

For question 8 – native-like pronunciation as the target pronunciation – the

participants provided 51 comments that can be thematically grouped into
following ideas (selected utterances are presented as an example):

54
• professionality – participants (N = 7) associate native-like pronunciation as a
standard for the student majoring English (“because it's important to me as a
person who deals with it to a larger extent, than other people”) or they view
themselves as a model for the students (e.g. “so that I would teach correct
pronunciation as a teacher”). They also cite native-like pronunciation as
professional (“Pronunciation is important and people also sound more
professional if their pronunciation is at least a little closer to that of native
speakers”, “I like the way it sounds; people think I'm not Slovak”, “I find it more
professional”, “It bothers me if someone can't pronounce Slovak, that's probably
why”).
• self-confidence – participants (N = 4) cite native-pronunciation boost their
confidence (e.g. “so that I feel more confident and people understand me better”,
“I feel more confident and people who are native speakers understand me
better”).
• part of the linguistic competence – several participants also view
pronunciation as an inseparable layer of English (e.g. “because correct
pronunciation is part of speech which, as a whole, can function only partially
without one of its parts”, “because then one masters a language as such”, “Correct
pronunciation is an integral part of language”).
• facilitation of communication – participants (N =3) see its importance for
communication (e.g. “for greater comprehensibility, it sounds more natural. It's
nicer to listen to”, “to understand what I'm saying”).
• other reasons – participants (N = 2) also cite other reasons (e. g. “because with
the correct pronunciation, in my opinion, I show respect for a given language and
culture”, “Because it pleases me”).

Students who did not agree with the statement provided the following
comments, presented below according to the main topics:
• intelligibility as a goal – participants (N=5) who did not agree with the
statement claimed intelligibility the goal of pronunciation instruction (e.g.
“[native-like pronunciation] is not the primary goal, what matters in the correct
intonation, stress, yes, the correct pronunciation of vowels and consonants - but
the most important aspect is intelligibility”, “It is necessary to focus on clear
communication, not on 100% imitation of pronunciation”, “I don't find it
important”).
• limits to native-like pronunciation acquisition – a group of participants (N
= 5) express their awareness of limits to their own ability to produce native-
like sounds (“Since the Slovak language and pronunciation are quite different
from English, I think that achieving 100% pronunciation as a native speaker is
very challenging”, “I want to get as close as possible to it, but I don't think that in

55
 regular communication (outside of teaching) it matters that much”, “Yes, but of
course it is not 100% possible, e.g. in terms of connected speech, etc.”).
• pessimism – several participants (N = 5) are even pessimistic about their
pronunciation or even resigned from the training (e.g. “because in my opinion,
this is not entirely possible unless one lives abroad or is in daily contact with
native speakers”, “Because I will never be that (a native speaker), I will not even
think that way”, “I will never succeed again, I am too old, but I would like to
improve as much as possible”).
• variety of accents – the final group of participants (N = 8) are aware of the
great variety of English accents, appreciate it and perceive their accent as a part
of their identity (e.g. “English has dozens of accents, it is perfectly fine to find your
own / have a national, i.e. Slovak accent”, “I want to have my own style. I want to
be able to pronounce nicely but at the same time not imitate any accent from any
country”, “Because foreigners learning the Slovak language also have their own
accent, they do not imitate ours. For native speakers, our accent is easy to listen
to”).
• pride - one participant is proud of their accent (“I'm not ashamed of my
accent”).

Question 9 focused on the aspect of intelligibility. The data in table 3 suggest

more than one of the participants agree with both statements (8 and 9). The
comments on item 9 can be grouped as follows:
Agreement with both statements (8 and 9) – 4 participants agreed why they
agree with both statements (“[I speak] comprehensibly and with the correct
pronunciation, because when I don't speak like that, I feel that my English lags behind
native English”, “Both are important”, “In a comprehensive communication, it is
probably a combination of both aspects, if possible”, “If we look at the accent as an
intonation, then I do not focus on that. I tend to focus on the British accent, but also
to make my speech comprehensible”).
However, the majority of open answers (N = 26) clearly expressed the priority
of comprehensibility over native-like pronunciation (e.g. “because the role of
language is also to communicate with others”, “So that the people I talk to
understand what I'm trying to tell them”, “to reduce the risk of miscommunication
and misunderstandings”).
The possible reasons were similar to the ones presented in question 8, i.e.
articulatory limits (“I would prefer it if the phonemes that do not belong there were
not on the tip of my tongue..., it irritates me but I cannot help it”).
However, the cited reason of using a comprehensible pronunciation for
professional purposes was different than in question 8 – while the participants
in question 8 strived for native-like pronunciation to sound professional, the
participants in question 9 lowered their native-like pronunciation to an intelligible
56
one because of its efficiency in the classroom, especially with the underprepared
and inexperienced students native-like pronunciation can be concerning (“It is
important that my future students understand me; because of the student”, “Because
of the students who come to primary school with a very low level of English”, “to be
comprehensible when I help with English in tutoring. It's situational”). These
statements support the participants’ evaluation of the quality of pronunciation
instruction at the lower level of the education system.
As far as the participants’ concern about their pronunciation, they (92.3%) are
concerned about it and do not agree with the statement suggesting no concern);
only two participants expressed why they are not concerned (“I don't care about
pronunciation only when I'm in a circle of friends and our speech is garbled for fun,
otherwise I would try to have the best possible pronunciation”, “depending on the
situation”).
The remaining comments (N=33) repeated the aforementioned reasons for the
importance of pronunciation, i.e. it enables communication with native speakers,
it forms the first impression of the listeners, because it reflects the overall
competence in the foreign language, and can create a barrier in communication,
etc. (“In my opinion, pronunciation is highly important, I think that a native speaker
will overlook small grammatical errors, but probably not incorrect pronunciation”,
“The longer I learn English, the more I care about its correct pronunciation because
I realise how important it is for people to understand me”, “I care about
pronunciation, as it also has a distinctive function and it is the first thing we notice
about oral expressions”).
The comparison of the answers of three interrelated questions 8-10 confirms
the perceived importance of pronunciation by the participants, even if their goals
(intelligibility or nativeness) may differ or even overlap.

Table 4: Students' preference of accents

Answer Answers Percentage
British 85 72.6 %
American 43 36.8 %
Australian 7 6.0 %
Canadian 2 1.7 %
other 5 4.3 %
none 2 1.7 %

The answers indicate that the participants prefer the traditional prestigious
native accents, broadly and non-specifically referred to as British or American;
57
however, the preference of the British accent corresponds to the preference of the
teachers, but as they estimated, it contradicts with their estimation based on
experience of preferences of their students.
In the open section, one respondent distinguished between the accent they use
(British and American) and accent they like to listen to (Scottish and Irish). One
respondent missed the pronunciation of New Zealand English and one respondent
prefers “Slovak/my own”. One respondent does not specify the accent, but finds
rhotic pronunciation variety easier to pronounce. Finally, one respondent finds the
British pronunciation closer to their heart, but gets influenced by the authentic
audio-visual production; therefore, pronounces words “subconsciously”.

Table 5:The most frequently useful practices for pronunciation improvement in class
Answer Answers Percentage
imitation of recordings of native speakers 79 67.5 %
theoretical explanation of a pronunciation feature 30 25.6 %
transcription of words (practicing transcribing or 61 52.1 %
reading transcribed texts)
teachers’ feedback 64 54.7 %
classmate feedback 7 6.0 %
pronunciation games 32 27.4 %
explaining pronunciation mistakes and their 63 53.8 %
consequences
other 7 6.0 %

This questionnaire item aimed at the identification of pronunciation training

techniques used in a traditional classroom environment that are typical for
controlled settings. These activities are predominantly cognitive and memory-
based, according to Oxford’s classification of learning strategies.
Peer feedback (social strategy) does not seem to be popular among the
participants (N = 7), but on the contrary, the students find teacher’s feedback (also
a social strategy) the second most influential factor on their pronunciation (N =
64), which gives a higher relevance and credibility to a qualified teacher than to a
classmate.
The most popular technique is imitation of native speakers (cognitive, N = 79),
transcribing transcription in IPA (memory, N = 61) and explaining the
pronunciation mistakes (metacognitive, N = 63). On the contrary, pronunciation
games (affective) are preferred by only 32 respondents.
58
 In the open answers, the participants expressed their preference of imitation
of authentic examples of native accents of English (cognitive), intuitive
pronunciation/imitation of words they hear (cognitive), speaking with native
speakers (social), watching films in English with subtitles (metacognitive) and one
respondent had attended and liked a course based on practical use of the English
pronunciation with only the most essential theory provided.
13. I improve my pronunciation...

Table 6: The most frequently used practices for pronunciation improvement out of class
Answer Answers Percentage
self-studying by means of textbooks with 23 19.7 %
exercises
watching shows, films, videos 102 87.2 %
watching instructional videos aimed at 35 29.9 %
pronunciation training
listening to music 77 65.8 %
communicating with native speakers 56 47.9 %
with another classmate 18 15.4 %
with another teacher 26 22.2 %
by looking up pronunciation of unknown words 77 65.8 %
using recordings in electronic/online 44 37.6 %
dictionaries
no other way 1 0.9 %
other way 3 2.6 %

The final item of the questionnaire aimed at eliciting the most frequently used
strategies of the learners to improve their pronunciation at home. In contrast to
items in questions 4, where the focus was on the pronunciation practice activities
performed in the controlled environment of the classroom, the aforementioned
strategies are used consciously or subconsciously by the learners in a non-formal
manner.
The most frequent way of improving pronunciation of the participants (N =
102) is through the exposure of the target language, predominantly through
metacognitive activities based on audio-visual material, followed by the auditive
stimuli of music (N = 77) and equally (N = 77) looking up the pronunciation of
unknown words and the use of dictionaries (N = 44). Speaking to a native speaker
59
(social) is popular with 56 participants. On the other hand, purely cognitive
strategies, in this case, self-study (N = 23), pronunciation instruction videos (N =
35) and training with another teacher (N = 26) belong to the least popular methods
of non-formal pronunciation training. The fact, how many teachers the students
can observe or improve their pronunciation with, was not investigated.
In addition to the aforementioned strategies, three participants (2.6%) use also
other strategies not provided in the multiple-choice list, more specifically
communication with their friends (social strategy), watching interesting videos
(metacognitive) and recording themselves to listen to their pronunciation back
(cognitive).
The data indicate the students need to be introduced to compensation and
effective strategies that can be beneficial in the process of their pronunciation
improvement.
The final open section allowed participants to freely express their final
thoughts on the subject of pronunciation teaching. The participants (N = 16) used
this space to say goodbye, well-wishing, but also individual comments dealt with
other pronunciation issues.

The very final questionnaire item allowed the participants to extend their
previous comments or comment on the things not included in the questionnaire.
In total, 16 participants commented further on the topic:
feedback on teachers and their courses – one participant was the graduate
of the course at the department of the researcher and provided positive feedback
for the course; another participant was a graduate of an equivalent course at
another department of one of the universities in Slovakia. This questionnaire
participant highly praised that the course was based on the practical training of
pronunciation, transcription, recording different genres of speaking tasks and
little attention devoted to theory.
One of the participants expressed their concern about the neglect of the
pronunciation in the educational system in Slovakia at all levels and other
participants added pronunciation should be introduced to learners earlier or in
more attractive ways. The themes of self-improvement and the necessity to work
on the accent were emphasised.
Finally, a participant maintained that children have better pronunciation due
to games, which corresponds with the observation of teachers in chapter 4.

4.4 Discussion and conclusions

“Personally, I think that pronunciation is very important, and even if it is not key in
communication, as future teachers and advanced students of English, we should deal
with it more. However, I was all the more disappointed with our education system,
60
where almost no value was attached to it, and even the pronunciation course at the
university did not help me with anything practical. I learned everything through self-
study, You[T]ube videos and courses at foreign universities, which focus mainly on
practical pronunciation training.”
This statement reflects the frustration many learners of English experience when
they realise the role of pronunciation in authentic communication; however, this
statement places an unrealistic expectation on the courses of phonetics and
phonology. This mistaken demand should be clarified, or even better, avoided by
early intervention in classrooms before the window for pronunciation acquisition
closes. Accent reduction courses differ from regular pronunciation courses
because, in typical communication, accent free pronunciation is not required.
Besides the corrective element in regular English lessons and treatment of a
speech therapist, accent reduction courses are also offered by commercial
companies (Thompson, 2014).
With regard to research questions, the responses can be formulated as follows:
Q1: Similar to teachers of phonetics and phonology, pre-service teachers
strongly agree (66.7%) with the importance of pronunciation in communication
and more than half of the participants also strongly agree with the necessity of
studying other linguistic disciplines.
Q2: In terms of the goals of pronunciation teaching, the pre-service
teachers prefer intelligible pronunciation to native-like pronunciation (106 and 86
participants respectively). The data indicate pre-service teachers appreciate the
importance of both pronunciation goals, citing various reasons to its achievement
(comprehensibility and limits to achieve native-like pronunciation for
intelligibility; professionality and language competence as reasons for native-like
pronunciation). Only eight participants expressed no concern with regard to their
accent.
Q3: Pre-service teachers rely on traditional prestigious accents for
pronunciation instruction (British accents – 72.6%, American – 36.8%). Other
accents (Canadian, Australian, Scottish, New Zealand) are only marginal for
students, even if they like their acoustic quality.
Q4: In terms of the quality of their own pronunciation training at primary
and lower secondary schools, 38.5% of pre-service teachers disagree and 26.5%
strongly disagree with the statement pronunciation training was at a good level.
Conversely, the higher secondary education provided them with a slightly better
pronunciation training (one third of participants are neutral, 29.9% disagree and
13.7% strongly disagree with the quality of pronunciation instruction at higher
secondary schools).
Q5: Pre-service teachers apply different learning techniques in learning
pronunciation – while in classroom setting, they prefer imitation (strongly agree
53.0%) and transcription (43.6%), in an informal setting they benefit from
61
listening/watching authentic materials (films, videos, 87.2%; music 65.8%) and
communication with native speakers (47.9%). Teachers’ feedback is more
beneficial than peer feedback (54.7% and 6.0% respectively). Explicit explanation
of mistakes is beneficial for 53.8% of pre-service teachers.
Q6: As for the future pedagogical efforts of the pre-service teachers
participating in the questionnaire, 47% of respondents will place emphasis on
pronunciation of their future learners, which suggests a more positive situation in
schools in Slovakia.

The overall results of the questionnaire are in line with the similar studies in the
field with other pre-service teachers as well as in-service teachers. Pre-service
teachers who are aware of the importance of pronunciation want to teach it and
plan to follow one of the prestigious models they are familiar with (Buss; 2015,
Koike, 2016). Furthermore, the results confirm Metruk’s (2020) findings with
regard the perception of pronunciation as equal in importance as grammar and
vocabulary. Most participants view intelligibility as their ultimate goal, but as
future professional users of English, they strive for native-like pronunciation, as
suggested by the teachers in chapter 3 of this publication, or Janicka et al. (2005).
Pre-service teachers with experience benefit from modification of their
pronunciation to a more accented to sound more approachable to their learners
(as Chen, 2016), and rely mostly on memory and cognitive strategies (Pawlak &
Szyszka, 2018), which contradicts to findings of Akyol (2013). Pre-service teachers
prefer prestigious accents, as identified by Janicka et al. (2005). Similarly, as in the
study by Janicka et al., the participating pre-service teachers prefer British accents
followed by American accents, but this finding contradicts the results of study by
Coskum (2011). In terms of quality of pronunciation instruction in Slovak schools
at primary and secondary schools, participating pre-service teachers reported
relatively low quantity of instruction, which contradicts to findings of Datko
(2013) and Bodorík (2017).
The conclusions indicate pronunciation teaching in Slovakia is comparable to
situation in pronunciation teaching in other countries; however, pre-service
teachers have positive attitude to the subject and are open to communication with
pronunciation professionals, as evidenced by their participation in the
questionnaire data collection.
Although this study is limited in its extent due to the number of its participants, it
tentatively foreshadows the future direction of pronunciation learning in Slovakia
in the years to come. To ensure the improvement of pronunciation instruction
quality in Slovakia, further investigation into the needs of learners and their
motivation should be conducted. Furthermore, pre-service teachers could benefit
in specialised pronunciation teaching course that would prepare them for
methodological challenges they may face in their future practice, as well as their
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engagement in the current programs for in-service teachers (as instructors’
assistants or research assistants).

63
 5 Current trends in pronunciation
improvement

With the growing interest in pronunciation instruction, evidenced by the

volume of research, it has become increasingly important for teachers to keep
track of the latest research findings. Not all practices are readily available to the
classrooms, but teachers can find inspiration in the use of conventional tools they
have at their disposal in their classrooms.

5.1 Introduction to current pronunciation research

Starting from the earliest study, Saito (2012) analysed 15 quasi-experimental
studies to find out how effective an instruction in pronunciation development is,
as well as the focus of pronunciation training, a form of training (focus on form or
focus on forms) and the outcome measures (controlled, spontaneous). He also
observes the increasing focus on the intelligibility rather than native-like
pronunciation. In the studies, 7 studies dealt with suprasegmental features,
studies analysed segmental issues; however, there is no general trend in the choice
of the pronunciation features, as the studies treat those features that represent the
challenge for the particular speakers involved in the experiment. Besides these
individual aspects of pronunciation, Saito (2012) claims the instruction also
improved the intelligibility of participants; therefore, both types of pronunciation
features must be presented to learners equally. The length of the instruction in the
studies presented by Saito (2012) was equally important as in the study by Lee et
al. (2015) – experimental treatments shorter than 30 minutes do not draw long-
term results. Generally, studies improving pronunciation at a controlled level
received better results than studies with a spontaneous level in both, segments
and suprasegmentals. In terms of FonF and FonFS type of instruction, controlled
level elicited greater improvement than spontaneous tasks.
Two years later, Thompson and Derwing (2014) observed a growing interest
into the investigation of pronunciation instruction; while in the previous decades
the focus of pronunciation studies concentrated on the contrastive analysis of
phonetic inventories of languages, or was only a marginal issue in the context of
Communicative Language teaching, at the turn of the 21 century, the number of
studies of pronunciation instruction was significantly higher than in the previous
64
years. The authors discovered that even if most of the studies took place in the
setting where English was spoken as a primary language and the exposure to the
learners to the target language was also available to learners outside classroom,
learners had different language backgrounds. The learners mostly ranged around
the age of young adulthood (graduate and undergraduate students), with
occasional teenagers or pre-teenage learners or learners in their fifties. The goal
of the pronunciation instruction was mostly native-like pronunciation, although
several studies concentrated on intelligibility. The majority of studies focused on
the segments than suprasegmentals or their combination, according to the
learners’ needs based on their L1. The mix of classroom and CAPTT instruction
was in favour of the classroom instruction, which also generally took longer than
the CAPTT instruction. Finally, 82% of all studies had proven the effectiveness of
the instruction.
Lee et al. (2015) analysed research studies for three types of information: “(i)
contexts, (ii) treatments (including targeted linguistic features), and (iii) outcome
types found in studies of PI” (p. 353). According to the authors, age is a more
important factor than exposure to the target language (in the classroom only,
outside the classroom); however, the authors make conclusions only in respect of
the studies analysed. They also found out the learners at any proficiency level can
benefit from pronunciation instruction. Even if both laboratory and classroom-set
studies are effective, the number of studies carried out in the classroom had
grown. Other important factors are the length of the treatment, as well as the
feedback the learners receive. Using technology and software appears to have a
lowering effect compared to teacher-led experiments due to the fact that
computers cannot provide the input and feedback with the way a human teacher
would, but the CAPTT has a great potential in pronunciation instruction.
Finally, Vančová (2019) also observed a shift from teaching native-like
pronunciation to teaching intelligible pronunciation to increase the ability to
communicate among a great variety of English speakers, native or non-native, who
face challenges in communication due to the status of English as Lingua Franca.
Furthermore, another important shift was observed in the increased interest of
teaching suprasegmentals in the analysis of research studies dealing with
segmental and suprasegmental issues.

5.2 Research methods and questions

Teaching English pronunciation has been a growing area of research interest
in the 21st century. The pronunciation improvement experimental studies are
carried out to develop the most efficient practices in different settings – in a
controlled laboratory setting, which tests and validates the researchers’
65
hypotheses to bring them into the second type, the classroom setting, where the
research conclusions have a direct impact on learners in the classroom. In the
following part, current practices in pronunciation improvement will be presented.

Methods
The chapter aims to provide an analysis of the current practices in the
improvement of English pronunciation of various learner groups by analysing
selected research papers (N= 14) published in reputable scientific journals and
conference proceedings.
The first stage of the identification of the academic papers suitable for the
analysis took place in July and August 2020 and consisted of the search of academic
databases and services providing access to academic papers, i.e. Google Scholar,
Science Direct, SCOPUS, Springer Link, Web of Science, Wiley Online Library (in
alphabetical order). The key words “pronunciation teaching”, “English”,
“experiment”, “research” and their variations were used to identify the academic
papers fulfilling the criteria for the analysis. To provide an overview of the most
recent practices, the search was limited to the years 2014 and 2019. After filtering
the papers from the databases, the review studies, book chapters and theses were
excluded from the search. The final criterion for inclusion of the papers into the
present review was their availability online. After filtering the search results with
the aforementioned advanced criteria, the results were ordered according to the
number of citations in the case of such databases as Web of Science, or based on
their relevance in the case of, for instance, Wiley Online Library or Science Direct.
The next step of the paper selection excluded papers dealing with training
pronunciation of languages other than English (e.g. French, Spanish, German) and
only the papers written in English were accepted for the analysis.
The final step of the paper selection consisted of the overview of the abstracts
to confirm the selected papers complied with the requirements to answer the
research questions. The research questions were formulated as follows:
1. What is the current interest of the EFL pronunciation improvement
investigation? Are segmental or suprasegmental features dominant? Is
intelligible or native-like pronunciation the goal of these efforts?
2. What are the most effective methods and approaches to teach pronunciation in
the EFL classroom?
3. Who are the subjects of the pedagogical instruction?

The selected papers were found in Asian Englishes, iJET, International Journal
of Educational Technology in Higher Education, Journal of Computer Assisted
Learning, Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences (GlobELT: An International
Conference on Teaching and Learning English as an Additional Language, Antalya –
Turkey), Speech Communication, System, TESL Ontario and TESOL Journal.
66
 5.3 Research results
The overview of the papers confirms that pronunciation and its teaching is an
attractive topic for a wide range of peer-reviewed academic journals, in addition,
the topic is discussed in journals of different orientation, e.g. applied linguistics,
World Englishes, language system, language teaching. At the same time, a
significant number of journals aims at studying the impact and benefits of using
technology in education and learning.

Table 7: Overview of the studies

Study Age Learners Pronunciatio Instructio Intelligible Length
n focus n /native-like
pronuncia-
tion
Gooch, adult EFL 22 /ɹ/ FonF native-like 4 days
Saito & learners Korean
Lyster (undergradu speakers
(2016) ate students)
Yenkimal interpreter 48 Farsi prosody FonF intelligible 12hours
eki & van trainees speakers over 4
Heuven (19-24) weeks
(2019)
Ding et students of 40 intonation FonFS native-like 3 hours
al. English (18- Chinese per 20
(2019) 20) learners weeks
Rezaei, 20-35 40 assimilation FonFS native-like 3
Gowhari Iranian (American months
& speakers pronunciatio
Azizifar n features)
(2015)
Wang & college 78 theoretical FonF native-like 1 se-
Zhou English Chinese background mester
(2019) Major stu- learners of phonetics
dents and phonol-
ogy
Hamada 18-21 58 Japa- selected FonFS intelligible 15
(2018a) nese segmental lessons
learners and supra-
segmental
features
Rahimi & high school 56 Lingua FonFS intelligible 6
Ruzrokh students Iranian Franca Core months
(2016) learners features (45
minutes
, 2 times
per
week)
Liu, Zhu, junior 64 intonation FonFS native-like 2
Jiao & Xu middle Chinese months
(2018) learners
67
 schools stu-
dents
Hermans high school 70 + 60 6 pronuncia- FonFS intelligible
, Sloep & students Dutch tion features
Kreijns learners
(2017)
Hassan- 14 – 35 129 lexical stress FonF native-like a series
dzaeh & native of mini-
Salehiza- speakers lessons,
deh of Farsi 8 weeks
(2019)
Wang & adult learn- 34 enhancing FonFS native-like 8 weeks
Young ers and 7th Taiwan- English of data
(2014) graders ese pronuncia- collec-
(college and speakers tion tion
junior
school)
Sadat & late teens 38 lexical stress FonFS native-like 9
Tehrani and early partici- placement weeks,
(2017) twenties pants (16 rules) 25
from six minutes
countrie
s

The research subjects

Without a doubt, the age of learners is an important factor in pronunciation
acquisition; therefore, it provides an insight into the current target group of
pronunciation instruction. All studies, except two, discussed in this chapter
concentrated on the presentation of the original research into pronunciation
improvement of adult learners of English, primarily university students who learn
English either as their second or a foreign language. The only two exceptions were
the studies by Hermans, Sloep & Kreijns (2017), who indirectly investigated the
pronunciation improvement of secondary school students (some of them “aged
under 18”, p. 6) through the training of their teachers in CAPTT; and the study by
Rahimi & Ruzrokh (2016) who trained Lingua Franca Core features to high school
students.
The aforementioned facts suggest that most research into pronunciation
training and improvement is concentrated on adult learners of English. One of the
possible facts is that these learners present a convenience sample for the
researchers most frequently at a university.

Linguistic background of the research subjects

Another important aspect of pronunciation acquisition is the mother tongue
and the linguistic background of the learners. The studies presented were

68
performed on the learners who come from a country where English is spoken as a
foreign language (e.g. the Netherlands, Iran, China, South Korea). The study by
Ding et al. (2019) took place in the USA, but involved Korean speakers (N=15)
attending an ESL course and English native-speaking undergraduate raters (N=95)
and the study by Sadat-Tehrani was carried out in Canada where English is one of
two official languages.
In terms of their professional orientation, most studies sampled the
participants from students of other study programs than English major and no
study would concentrate directly on the pre-service teachers of English. The only
study that dealt with professional language users was the study by Yenkimaleki &
van Heuven (2019) who trained pronunciation students of translation trainees
and the study of Wang & Zhou (2019) who improved pronunciation of English
Major students.

Pronunciation model
Literature has shown that the pronunciation models in the classroom have
changed and the traditional prestigious models do not have to be sufficient in
current communication when the communication between two non-native
speakers is more frequent than the communication between a native speaker and
a non-native speaker (Levis, 2005). From this perspective, the role of the
pronunciation model has changed. In the studies presented, Rezaei et al. (2015)
and Ding et al. (2019) aimed to practice and present a native model (American)
and four studies did not focus on the native model. The study by Rahimi & Ruzrokh
(2016) even trained the participants the features of Jenkins’ Lingua Franca Core
(2000).

Pronunciation focus of the pronunciation training

The first area of the research effort presented aims to identify the focus of
pronunciation training. The two main areas are generally presented by the
segmental or suprasegmental level of English.
In total, three studies concentrated on the segmental level.
The study by Gooch, Saito & Lyster (2016) concentrated on the development of
pronunciation of /ɹ/ to Korean adult EFL learners by comparing the effects of
recasts and prompts. Hermans et al. (2017) concentrated on the practice of six
main segmental issues of the Dutch learners of English – voiceless dental, non-
aspirated plosives, æ, linking /r/yen sound and əʊ.
On the other hand, four studies concentrated on the suprasegmental level. The
study by Rezaei et al. (2015) concentrated on the formal training of assimilation
by its observation performed by Iranian learners. In the study, the members of the
experimental group received explicit instruction on assimilation rules, which
included elements “such as voice assimilation, flapping of intervocalic T in an
69
American accent, dentalisation, bilibialisation, nasalisation, palatalisation, labio-
dentalisation, etc.” (p. 199). Sadat-Tehrani (2017) concentrated on teaching 16
rules of English stress placement to second language learners of English. The
study by Liu, Zhu, Jiao & Xu (2018) concentrated on pronunciation, intonation and
total effect by using the smartphone app Fluent English. Yenkimaleki & van Heuven
(2019) studied the computer-assisted training of prosody by comparing them with
instructor-based prosody teaching in Farsi speaking by interpreter trainees. The
participants were evaluated in comprehensibility, accentedness and the correct
use of word stress and sentence stress.
The remaining studies were of mixed character. The study by Rahimi &
Ruzrokh (2016) taught the LFC features to one group of the learners and the other
group of approximated the native British accent to investigate if the practice
improves the learners’ intelligibility. The participants were not taught the non-
core features. The instruction of both groups was based on the communicative
language teaching and followed the model of teaching pronunciation as designed
by Celce-Murcia et al. (2010).
The study by Wang & Zhou (2019) did not specify the focus of its training, but
claimed to improve pronunciation in general by watching and dubbing native
speakers, therefore implying native pronunciation was used as a model and the
training involved practising the English segments as a screenshot of the
instructional video of the phoneme /m/ is provided as an illustration of the
pronunciation training process. The process of pronunciation training was
preceded by the instructional video of the theoretical explanation of the
pronunciation feature.
Neither Wang & Young (2014) did not specify the target pronunciation forms
of their ASR-based CALL system used in the training, but the imitative tasks
required the participants to record full sentences into the system.

Instruction in pronunciation improvement

The choice of the practice method is the fundamental element in pronunciation
improvement. The effective methods should be chosen with the respect to the age
of the learners, the focus of the training and should address the context in which
the pronunciation features are improved and later used. The final criterion was
studied by Saito (2015) who in his meta-analysis divided studies into two types:
studies with focus-on-form (FonF) and focus-on-formS (FonFS).
While the focus-on-form involved into pronunciation practice also
communicative aspect and allowed learners to practice communicatively
meaningful tasks, contrary to focus-on-formS type of instruction that is based on
the practice of accurate pronunciation by drills and repetition (Saito 2012).
According to this classification, the FonF studies are represented by 4 studies.

70
 The study by Gooch et al. (2016) aimed to improve the pronunciation of /ɹ/
over the four 1-hour sessions taking place for two weeks. The study compared two
approaches to pronunciation teaching – recasts and prompts and the study
followed the form-focused instruction. The participants were assigned to three
groups – FFI-only, the FFI-recast and the FFI prompt groups and two groups also
received corrective feedback besides the explicit articulatory instruction. The
performances of the participants were judged by 5 NS listeners with teaching
English as a foreign or second language. The participants practised the target
sound in “meaning-oriented tasks” (p. 120), more specifically
argumentation. Yenkimaleki & van Heuven (2019) compared instructor-based
pronunciation teaching with the participants receiving no treatment and
computer-based pronunciation training. The control group listened to authentic
speakers with an American accent, the instructor-based group worked on raising
the awareness of the English prosody by theoretical explanation followed by
practical exercises. The computer-based group were trained by the Accent Master
software. After completion of the course, all three groups were asked to perform
a post-test with spontaneous task assessed by three judges. Wang & Zhou (2019)
made students videos with English pronunciation instruction and English spoken
films and let them dub videos. After the class, the students were supposed to
review the lesson online and complete the tasks using email or BBS. Hassanzadeh
& Salehizadeh (2019) concentrated on the improvement of the word stress in
three groups – the output group, the input enhancement group and the corrective
feedback group. All three groups watched the same vodcast and concentrated on
the same target vocabulary; however, the form changed.

The FonFS was represented by 8 studies.

Zhou & Wang (2019) improved the learners’ pronunciation by “watching the
videos of English pronunciation, seeing the film of the English version and dubbing
the cartoons and TV plays in English” (p. 170). The study rooted in the network-
based teaching mode that was based on the Piaget’s constructivism theory of
learning and included the use of such network means as QQ or email that were
used to collect the students’ work by the teacher. Therefore, the students’ work
extended beyond the classroom time and students could benefit from the feedback
received by the teacher for their work outside the classroom. Rezaei et al. (2015)
employed Iranian speakers in an experiment consisting of “a treatment, which was
a formal training of phonetic rules” (p. 199) and compared their data to the
experimental group receiving no treatment in a pronunciation test taken after 12
weeks of the treatment program based on the “Applied English Phonology by
Mehmet Yavas” (ibid.). Liu et al. (2018) used the smartphone app Fluent English
to improve the pronunciation, intonation and total effect. The participants
performed a task in the intelligent “imitating-speaking” mode (p. 336) and the app
71
gave them the automatic speech assessment. The app allowed students to listen to
dialogues, read after the dialogues and receive feedback and score. The app also
used colour codes to indicate the students’ progress, as well as allowed the
learners to communicate with its other users to receive help, which supported
their collaboration in pronunciation improvement. Rahimi & Ruzrokh (2016)
improved the pronunciation of speakers in of two groups based on the
communicative language teaching model of teaching pronunciation as designed by
Celce-Murcia et al. (2010) discussed in chapter 1, therefore the stages included
description and analysis, listening discrimination, controlled practice, guided
practice and communicative practice. Sadat-Tehrani (2017) followed the
presentation, practice, production model in teaching the word stress with the
elements of task-based language teaching in the review stage of the experiment
(focus on form). The participants in the Wang & Young (2014) study were asked
to practice and record their own production into the ASR-based CALL system over
a period of eight weeks. The pronunciation training was performed fully virtually,
without any in-person feedback from an instructor. The sole feedback was
generated from the system. Hamada (2018a) analysed the impact of the IPA
shadowing and haptic shadowing in two-step quasi-experimental studies. In the
first part of the experiment, Hamada divided the participants of the quasi-
experimental study into two groups after the pre-test consisting of reading four
sentences – the haptic-shadowing group individually studied the rules of
suprasegmental phonology and could discuss them with the instructor during the
summarising session. The IPA shadowing group studied one of the selected
suprasegmental features with the instructor during one session. Both groups
worked for 30 minutes during 15 sessions overall. Neither of both groups
vocalised the practised pronunciation aspects. In the study by Ding et al. (2019)
the learners were asked to practice intelligibility and fluency over a period of 3
weeks. Each week, they attended the laboratory three times for 30-minute
sessions. The first week they practised 8 sentences, the second week they
reviewed them and added 8 new sentences and eventually, they practised 24
sentences in the last week of the training. The pronunciation exercises consisted
of say-listen-repeat, listen-repeat, backward build-up tasks. Liu & Tseng (2019)
treated the participants in 12 sessions over a period of 36 days. Each session was
a 3-day cycle. The scripted tasks consisted of a loud reading of texts in an EFL
textbook; the unscripted speech consisted of speaking feedback and comment on
the text. Both speeches were approximately 10 minutes long. Hermans et al.
(2017) tried to improve the pronunciation of the Dutch learners of English in six
error types through the use of CAPTT. The errors were treated in individual
lessons, which included information, video and audio material and practice
material. The students shadowed and recorded the practised target features at

72
their own pace and they were introduced to phonetic symbols and visualisation of
articulation. Both teachers and students could evaluate the recordings.

The effectiveness of the instruction

The results of the research study by Wang and Zhou (2019) indicate that
network-based English Phonetics Teaching Mode can be effective for English-
Major students. The data collected by the questionnaire also revealed that after the
experiment, the increase in using the Internet for educational purposes by the
participants increased by more than 40% to the final 65.8%. The study of Rezaei
et al. (2015) proved that the learners who received explicit instruction on the rules
of the English assimilation in 12 sessions, scored a significantly higher than the
participants in the control group in the pronunciation test performed after the
experiment. In the study by Gooch et al. (2016) that compared the effect of recasts
and prompts on the students’ pronunciation, significant differences were
identified in the prompt group (an explicit request to correct the target sound) in
both, controlled and spontaneous tasks; the recast group (correction provided by
the instructor in the form of a model pronunciation of the word after the student’s
mistake) only showed significant improvement in the controlled task in the pre-
test and post-test results. Liu et al. (2018) maintain that the use of Fluent English
app in the “imitating-speaking” mode allowed its users to make significant
progress in pronunciation, intonation and total effect in comparison to the
participants in the control group. Rahimi & Ruzrokh (2016) found out that
“integrating LCF syllabus in teaching pronunciation enhances the intelligibility of
language learners in comparison with a standardised British English instruction”
(p.152) In Yenkimaleki & van Heuven’s study (2019), the CAPT and IBPT groups
improved significantly from the control group; however, the difference between
the first two groups was not significant. Sadat-Tehrani (2017) study elicited a
significant difference in the post-test after following the presentation-practice-
presentation model. Wang & Young (2014) study indicate the beneficial effect of
the ASR-based CALL system pronunciation training program, with the potential to
improve the pronunciation of adult learners. Liu & Tseng (2019) have identified
different conditions for a different type of output – the scripted speech benefits
from explicit instruction and the unscripted speech benefits from the
context. Ding et al. (2019) confirmed that the use of the Golden Speaker Builder
improved the learners’ fluency and comprehensibility; however, it did not address
the issues of the participants’ improvement at the phoneme level. Hermans et al.
(2017), who trained teachers in using CAPTT and then used it in the classroom,
identified improvement in 5 of six trained pronunciation features. Hassanzadeh &
Salehizadeh (2019) concluded that the phonetical overload of students is not
suitable for language learners and none of the experimental approaches has a long-
term effect. Only the output-oriented group has the highest impact on the short-
73
term results. This is in line with suggestions of the teachers in Chapter 3 of this
publication that the goal of instruction should concentrate only on the crucial
elements. The only study that did not directly benefit from the computer-assisted
pronunciation training was the study by Hamada (2018a) who found that both
approaches, IPA shadowing and Haptic shadowing, improved comprehensibility,
segments and suprasegmentals of the participants; however, the haptic shadowing
group experienced a more significant improvement.

5.4 Discussion and conclusions

The current interest of research in pronunciation improvement in the global
context aims to address the actual needs of the learners (based on their mother
tongue); therefore, a relatively balanced number of studies investigated the
improvement of segmental and suprasegmental features and their combination.
Most studies still relate to native accents, in the studies analysed, General
American is more popular among researchers. Even if intelligibility improvement
is investigated, native accents tend to take the role of a point of reference.
The responses to the research questions can be formulated as follows:
Q1: In the current pronunciation teaching research, the suprasegmental level
seems to be the dominant focus of investigation (Yenkimaleki & van Heuven, 2013;
Ding et al., 2019; Reaei et al., 2015; Liu et al., 2018; Hassanzadeh & Salehizadeh,
2019; Sadat & Tehrani, 2017). With respect to native or intelligible pronunciation,
native accents are still viewed as relevant in pronunciation investigation, as a
target or model features (Gooch et al., 2016; Ding et al., 2019; Rezaei et al., 2015;
Liu et al., 2018; Hassanzadeh & Salehizadeh, 2019; Wang & Young, 2014; Sadat &
Tehrani, 2017). Studies conducted with high school learners seem to be in a
minority (Hermans et al., 2017, Rahimi & Ruzrokh, 2016).
Q2: Concerning the methods and approaches, two main approaches were
compared—FonF and FonFS (Saito, 2012). In the studies, FonFS is the dominant
of the two concepts (Ding et al., 2019; Rezaei et al., 2015; Wang & Zhou, 2019;
Hamada, 2018a; Rahimi & Ruzrokh, 2016; Liu et al., 2018; Hermans et al., 2017;
Wang & Young, 2014; Sadat & Tehrani, 2017). Several studies benefited from the
use of CAPTT in the classroom (Ding et al., 2019; Gooch et al., 2016; Yenkimaleki
& van Heuven, 2019; Hermans et al., 2017; etc.).
Q3: In terms of the research participants, the pronunciation improvement
experiments seem to be focused on adult learners of English, with the exception of
studies by Hermans (2017) and Rahimi & Ruzrokh (2016) who dealt with high
school students. Only two studies (Yenkimaleki & van Heuven, 2019 and Wang &
Zhou, 2019) focused their attention to professional users of English (interpreter
trainees and college English major students respectively.
74
 Irrespective of the approach the researchers applied and length of the
instruction, all studies displayed a certain improvement, either achievement of
specifically set goals or statistically significant improvement of the participants’
performance in a post-test, which contradicts Lee at al. (2015). This leads to the
conclusion that any practice of pronunciation is better for students’ pronunciation
than no practice, even if there is not a universal method or approach that would be
suitable for the needs of all learners of all ages and linguistic backgrounds. All
studies aimed at improving the pronunciation of late teenage or young adulthood.
In comparison to Vančová (2019), the studies analysed confirm the growing
interest in suprasegmental features; however, focus on intelligibility has not been
proven. The results also confirm Saito’s (2012) and Thompson & Derwing’s (2014)
observation that there is a greater concentration on specific pronunciation issues
of the learners and no general trend in pronunciation instruction into universal
pronunciation features across languages. In line with the findings of Thompson &
Derwing (2014), benefitting from communicative or integrated pronunciation
teaching is still relatively rare, but the analysis presented did not confirm that most
pronunciation instruction is carried out in countries where English is used as L1
language.
Finally, research interest in pronunciation teaching has been growing and the
number of scientific studies available in academic literature confirms it. The
overview of analysed studies revealed that most pronunciation improvement still
takes place in a laboratory, outside the classrooms. This leads to the conclusion
that these research attempts have not found their way into actual teaching
practices yet.
The collected results suggest a wide range of recommendations. One of them is,
without a doubt, the necessity to involve the in-service teachers in experimental
pronunciation improvement studies that would allow them to share their
experience with researchers, incorporate their ideas into the investigation and use
the knowledge in their teaching practices. As a result, teachers would be able to
share the experience among the fellow in-service teachers in conferences or other
types of forums for teachers.
This leads to the possible direction of future investigation that would involve,
for instance, investigation of practices of those teachers who claim to integrate
pronunciation exercises into their lessons of English, as well as engaging teachers
and learners in actual classrooms into pronunciation improvement experiments.

75
 6 Conclusions and recommendations

Teaching English pronunciation requires the attention of all participants of the

educational process – teachers, learners, researchers and education policymakers.
Even though research in teaching and improving pronunciation is very fruitful,
there is no conclusion on the ultimate method, approach or a technique that would
provide learners with native-like pronunciation; therefore, more realistic goals
must be set for all types of English language learners.
Teaching foreign languages in central Europe has observed major changes in
the last decade of the 20th century due to political and social shifts in society, as
this region opened itself to globalisation in different spheres of life; however, this
change has not directly improved the quality of education and teaching foreign
languages in particular.
The main aim of this publication was to provide the overview of the current
state of pronunciation teaching based on three sources of original data: (1) the
review of recent teaching practices in the global context, (2) views of university
teachers of phonetics and phonology and (3) views of students of the course of
phonetics and phonology at a Slovak university. In addition to these research
efforts, an investigation into the status of pronunciation in the official pedagogical
documentation in Slovakia used as a point of departure to the publication
presented.
The research in chapter 3 presents its findings based on interviews with
university teachers of phonetics and phonology. The responses collected indicate
an overall trend to orientate the aforementioned courses towards the practical
needs of learners and a general trend to reduce the number of classes taught
weekly, even if they perceive pronunciation equal to other layers of language and
pronunciation instruction important for overall quality of speaking skills of
learners. In terms of teachers’ preferences, the bottom-up approach is dominant
among teachers, due to their personal preferences as well as the confidence to
teach them. The majority of teachers prefers and presents RP accent to students
and expect the pre-service teachers to be able to recognise, use and pronounce the
features in their own production, even if the accent-free pronunciation is not
achievable due to the physiological limitations of the non-native learners of
English; therefore, intelligible pronunciation is acceptable. On the contrary,
teachers perceive the popularity of wider range of accent among learners, e.g.
General American. Teachers apply a wide range of techniques to familiarise
76
various pronunciation features to students, communicative tasks being marginal
due to the difference between courses of phonetics and phonology and general
language improvement classes. The respondents perceive the importance of
teachers at primary and secondary schools in improving learners’ pronunciation.
Finally, motivation is regarded as the key factor in the long-term pronunciation
improvement.
In chapter 4, pre-service teachers expressed their perception of pronunciation
in a questionnaire containing items evaluated by a 5-point Likert scale, open and
multiple-choice questionnaire items. The participants view pronunciation as an
essential part of the mastery of foreign language and consider intelligible
pronunciation as the goal of their pronunciation practice; however, the reasons for
achieving native-like pronunciation can be professionality, overall preference of
native accents by pre-service teachers or facilitation of communication by using a
native accent. The participants generally prefer RP accent, followed by General
American, which indicates their overall preference of prestigious native accents in
pronunciation learning. Pronunciation training is viewed as insufficient at lower
levels of education and the most frequently used strategies for pronunciation
learning, irrespective of the setting (in class or outside class) are cognitive and
memory strategies according to Oxford’s taxonomy (1990). Despite the lack of a
pedagogical model that they could follow in their own in-service teaching, they are
willing to practice pronunciation with their future students.
In chapter 5, a meta-analysis of 12 research papers dealing with pronunciation
improvement techniques and practices indicates that the research is still being
mostly carried out among foreign learners in the countries where English is
spoken as the foreign language. The majority of pronunciation improvement
efforts concentrates on the late teens and adults in their early twenties, as they
represent the most convenient sample for researchers. A communicative approach
in the pronunciation teaching research (FonF) is not as dominant as in regular
classroom instruction and technology is being implemented for educational
purposes more and more. Although intelligibility seems to be the trend in
pronunciation teaching in general, pronunciation research requires a reference to
the target form presented by a native accent. All things considered, all of the
pronunciation improvement techniques presented can, to a certain extent,
improve the overall competence of foreign learners of English.
The data collected indicate that the lack of clearly defined goals in the sphere
of pronunciation is reflected in the relatively low knowledge and skills of Slovak
learners of English in the sphere of pronunciation. This lack of knowledge is
reflected in the unrealistic expectation of learners coming to university from the
course of phonetics and phonology. The learners perceive the course should
provide them with accent-reduction training, but university teachers aim to
provide learners with a more profound insight into the role of an acoustic layer of
77
the English language. Additionally, university teachers also set different goals for
English Major students and general learners of English, which adds to the basic
misconception of the role of pronunciation in communication and education. This
basic misunderstanding could be explained and the overall quality of
pronunciation of Slovak learners of English could be improved if a systematic
program for teaching pronunciation in Slovakia was developed. The necessary
steps should include:
1. Formulating precise criteria for pronunciation instruction and goals within the
National Curriculum and other pedagogical documentation;
2. Opening the discussion on the importance of pronunciation among a teacher of
English in Slovakia complemented by creating a support system for the
teachers. The support system should include material for all types of teachers;
3. Revising sessions for the teachers who are not familiar with the theoretical
aspects of pronunciation crucial for communication;
4. Pronunciation improvement classes for teachers who are not confident with
their own pronunciation;
5. Providing methodological workshops presenting teachers with the latest
trends in pronunciation teaching for different types of learners;
6. Creating teaching materials, handbooks and online information sources readily
available for teachers at all levels of education. The authors of the tailor-made
teaching materials should consider targeting the materials for learners with
specific pronunciation issues rooted in their mother tongue.

The proposed suggestions for improvement of conditions of teaching

pronunciation teaching should be based on the recent practices in pronunciation
teaching that include:
- meaningful and integrated pronunciation practice supporting the autonomous
approach of learners to pronunciation improvement;
- the respect for a learner’s preference of learning strategies allowing teachers and
learners to choose materials of their choice inside and outside the classroom
setting;
- presentation of a greater variety of native and non-native foreign accents of
English to English learners to introduce them also with other than standard
prestigious accents of English and prepare them for communication with non-
native speakers.
Following these recommendations with respect to creating conditions for
pronunciation teaching as well as to practices involved in the process,
pronunciation teaching in Slovakia could make a step forward towards the overall
improvement of the pronunciation of Slovak learners of English.

78
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88
Appendices

89
Appendix 1: Teachers’ interview questions

1. What are the organisational conditions in which the teachers teach phonetics and
phonology?
How long have you been teaching pronunciation/phonetics and phonology? Which
courses do you teach, and when? How many hours a week? Is it sufficient?
2. What are the teachers’ attitudes to teaching pronunciation or phonetics and
phonology?
How has your attitude changed after you started teaching it?
3. What is the importance of pronunciation/phonetics and phonology according to
the teachers?
In relation to other courses you teach, how do you perceive the importance of
pronunciation/phonetics and phonology? Do you think the pronunciation of
the speaker/learner relates to their overall competence in a foreign language?
4. What are the teachers’ references regarding teaching particular pronunciation
issues?
Are there any aspects of pronunciation/phonetics and phonology you prefer to
teach? Are you confident to teach all of them? How did you gain your
confidence? Do you think only native speakers can teach pronunciation?
5. What are the aims of the courses the teachers teach?
What is the aim of your course? What should your students know after your
completion of your course?
6. Which pronunciation model do the teachers prefer?
Which pronunciation model do you teach/describe/prefer? Which model do your
students prefer? What pronunciation should your students have (intelligible or
native-like)? Do you let your students develop their own accent?
7. What practices do the teachers include in their lessons?
Which activities do you include in your lessons? Have you excluded any? What is
the ratio of authentic and non-authentic materials? What is your students’
feedback (usefulness of the course, suggestions)?
Do you think it is useful to use:
• drill minimal pairs,
• practice transcription,
• use textbook exercises,
• use authentic materials,
• self-evaluation and peer-evaluation,
• communicative teaching.
• Explicit instruction on pronunciation mechanism and explanation of rules
8. What is the opinion of university teachers on the quality of pronunciation
instruction on lower levels of education?
Do you have experience with teaching at primary or secondary schools? If yes, did
you teach pronunciation? Observing your students at the university, do you think
they come well-prepared regarding pronunciation? Would you suggest any
changes? Do you think there is an age limit for pronunciation training?
9. What effect has pronunciation training/teaching phonetics and phonology had
on their students?
Do you think pronunciation training/teaching phonetics and phonology has a long-
term effect on students? If you teach your students in later semesters of their
study, can you see any qualitative changes in their pronunciation? Are there
students resistant to pronunciation training?
10. Is there anything you would like to add?

(Based on Macdonalds, 2002; Buss, 2015; Koike, 2016 and Uchida & Sugimoto,
2016),
Appendix 2: Interview sample
RESPONDENT 1

Ako dlho sa venujete učeniu výslovnosti angličtiny?

Na vysokej škole alebo aj na... celkovo? 10 rokov? Vysoká škola je 7 rokov
a okrem vysokej školy ďalšie tri, čiže tých 10 by to malo byť.

Aké iné predmety vyučujete?

Ono bolo viac predmetov, momentálne je to táto fonetika a didaktika
anglického jazyka a v minulosti to bolo aj niekoľko predmetov, taká tá praktická
angličtina.

A v ktorých ročníkoch?
Fonetika je prvý ročník zimný semester aj letný fonetika 2, a didaktika je zas
v magisterskom štúdiu, prvý a druhý ročník.

Po koľkých dvoch rokoch sa vraciate k študentom?

Tri-štyri

Aký bol Váš vzťah k predmetu fonetika a fonológia ako študent?

Tak u mňa bol veľmi pozitívny, aj keď zo začiatku asi ako každý študent som
bol trocha zľaknutý kvôli tým technickým záležitostiam a termínom a tak ďalej,
lebo predsa tá fonetika je trocha iná ako tie ostatné predmety. Nehovorím, že
ľahšia, ťažšia, lepšia, horšia, ale je trocha iná. Ale ja som mal vždy výslovnosť tak,
že som k tomu inklinoval, takže môj vzťah bol dobrý aj ako študenta.

Ako sa Váš vzťah k predmetu zmenil po tom, ako ste ho začali učiť?
Vzťah asi ostal rovnaký, myslím si, že stále k tomu inklinujem rovnako, akurát,
samozrejme, že už trocha za tie roky trošku viac som tomu porozumel, vôbec nie
som určite žiadny expert ani nejaký ťažký profesionál, ale čiže je tam ešte nejaký
väčší rešpekt pred tým všetkým, ale vzťah je teda veľmi veľmi pozitívny. Chcem to
učiť aj ďalej a veľa pedagógov to nechce učiť, to viem. Ale čo ešte možno súvisí
s touto otázkou je, že napísal som si dve učebnice, jednu na segmenty a jednu na
suprasegmenty, kde som sa to snažil podať jazykom takým bližším týmto 19-, 20-
ročným študentom, takže to mi tiež dosť takto pomohlo. Vzťah je dobrý.

Ako vnímate dôležitosť nácviku výslovnosti/učenia fonetiky a fonológie

v súvislosti s výučbou ostatných jazykových rovín?
 No tak tu je odpoveď pre mňa jednoduchá, lebo razím túto teóriu roky, je to
veľmi veľmi dôležité, lebo slovenská a anglická výslovnosť sú veľmi veľmi odlišné,
takže tu treba venovať veľkú dôležitosť nácviku. Veľa času. Zásadne nehovorím,
že iné systémy – gramatický, lexikálny a funkčný a tak ďalej, že majú byť kdesi na
druhej koľaji, to určite nie, ale tá dôležitosť je veľmi vysoká, veľmi veľká. Tá
výslovnosť anglická je ďaleko ťažšia ako možno v niektorých iných jazykoch, lebo
tie odlišnosti – je ich tam proste viac. To je veľká dôležitosť.

Myslíte si, že výslovnosť hovoriaceho alebo učiaceho sa súvisí s jeho

celkovou kompetenciou v cudzom jazyku?
Určite áno. Keď má niekto dobrú, lepšiu výslovnosť, tak jeho celková
performancia, ústny prejav, je podľa mňa pozitívnejšia ako u niekoho, kde je tá
výslovnosť slabšia, čiže dá sa tam možno skryť viacero chýb možno za ten jeho
ústny prejav, ktorý veľmi úzko súvisí s výslovnosťou, takže áno.
Appendix 3: Students’ questionnaire

Čo si myslíte o vyučovaní anglickej výslovnosti?

Milí respondenti,
dovoľujem si Vás osloviť ako svojich budúcich kolegov, učiteľov angličtiny, a
chcem Vás požiadať o zodpovedanie stručného dotazníka, ktorý zisťuje Vaše
názory na vyučovanie výslovnosti a jeho dôležitosť v cudzojazyčnom vzdelávaní.
Dotazník je anonymný, preto sa, prosím, nepodpisujte a v komentároch
neuvádzajte žiadne informácie, na základe ktorých by ste mohli byť
identifikovaná/-ý. Vaše odpovede budú zaručene anonymné. Dáta získané
dotazníkom budú slúžiť na výskumné účely. S Vašimi prípadnými otázkami ma
neváhajte kontaktovať. Za spoluprácu a Váš čas Vám vopred ďakujem,
Hana Vančová

1. Váš vzťah ku KAJaL PdF TU: (označte krížikom)

Nápoveda k otázke: Vyberte jednu alebo viac odpovedí

študent/ka 1. ročníka Bc. stupňa

študent/ka 2. ročníka Bc. stupňa
študent/ka 3. ročníka Bc. stupňa
študent/ka 1. ročníka Mgr. stupňa
študent/ka 2. ročníka Mgr. stupňa
absolvent/ka
učiteľ/ka z praxe
uchádzač/ka o štúdium
Iná...

2. Angličtina je pre mňa ...

Nápoveda k otázke: Vyberte jednu odpoveď

materinský jazyk
druhý jazyk
cudzí jazyk
3. Angličtine sa venujem (po anglicky sa učím) ........ rokov.

4. Moje najvyššie vzdelanie v angličtine:

Nápoveda k otázke: Vyberte jednu alebo viac odpovedí

maturitná skúška
medzinárodný certifikát
štátna skúška
Iná...

5. Moje skúsenosti s vyučovaním angličtiny:

Nápoveda k otázke: Vyberte jednu alebo viac odpovedí

žiadne - zatiaľ angličtinu len študujem (prejdite na otázku č. 7)

angličtinu vyučujem (prejdite, prosím, na otázku č. 6)
angličtinu doučujem v súkromí (prejdite, prosím, na otázku č. 7)
Iná...

6. Ako dlho a na akom stupni a type školy vyučujete?

7. Krížikom označte svoj postoj k uvedeným výrokom:

Nápoveda k otázke: 1= úplne súhlasím; 2 = skôr súhlasím; 3 = neviem
posúdiť; 4 = skôr nesúhlasím; 5 = úplne nesúhlasím

1 2 3 4 5

Výslovnosť je v cudzojazyčnej komunikácii dôležitá.

Pri hovorení v cudzom jazyku si uvedomujem svoju

výslovnosť.

Svoju výslovnosť v cudzom jazyku si chcem zlepšiť.

Cieľom výučby výslovnosti je výslovnosť imitujúca
rodeného hovoriaceho.

Ak by som mal/-a lepšiu výslovnosť, bol by som v

angličtine sebavedomejšia/-í.

Myslím si, že momentálne mám dobrú výslovnosť.

Myslím si, že vyučovanie anglickej výslovnosti na

základných školách je na dobrej úrovni.

Myslím si, že vyučovanie anglickej výslovnosti na

stredných školách je na dobrej úrovni.

Myslím si, že vyučovaniu správnej výslovnosti sa v

učebniciach angličtiny venuje dostatočná pozornosť.

Myslím si, že moji učitelia mi boli/sú vo výslovnosti

dobrým vzorom.

Študovať anglickú výslovnosť je náročné.

Niekedy zámerne pri hovorení v angličtine mením a

prispôsobujem svoju výslovnosť.

Ako učiteľka/učiteľ kladiem/budem klásť dôraz na

výslovnosť svojich žiakov/študentov.

Učenie výslovnosti je rovnako dôležité ako učenie

gramatiky či slovnej zásoby.

Doterajší spôsob učenia sa výslovnosti mi

vyhovoval.

Precvičovanie transkripcie mi pomohlo v zlepšovaní

mojej výslovnosti.

Imitovanie nahrávok/piesní/filmov a i. mi pomohlo

v zlepšovaní mojej výslovnosti.
 Cvičenia na rozlišovanie slov (napr. minimal pairs)
mi pomohli v zlepšovaní mojej výslovnosti.

Úlohy na doplňovanie slov do textu na základe

výslovnosti mi pomohli v zlepšovaní mojej
výslovnosti.

Teoretické informácie o výslovnosti mi pomohli

uvedomiť si niektoré aspekty výslovnosti.

8. Keď hovorím po anglicky, chcem vyslovovať ako rodený hovoriaci.

Nápoveda k otázke: Vyberte jednu z odpovedí a vysvetlite svoje dôvody.

áno
nie
Prečo?

9. Keď hovorím po anglicky, sústreďujem sa viac na zrozumiteľnosť než

prízvuk.
Nápoveda k otázke: Vyberte jednu z odpovedí a uveďte svoje dôvody.

áno
nie
Prečo?

10. Keď hovorím po anglicky, na výslovnosti mi nezáleží.

Nápoveda k otázke: Vyberte jednu z odpovedí a uveďte svoje dôvody.

áno
nie
Prečo?
11. Preferujem výslovnosť:
Nápoveda k otázke: Vyberte jednu alebo viac odpovedí

britskú
americkú
austrálsku
kanadskú
inú...
žiadnu

12. Pri nácviku správnej výslovnosti v škole mi pomohlo

Nápoveda k otázke: Vyberte najviac tri odpovede.

imitovanie rodených hovoriacich počúvaním nahrávok

teoretické vysvetlenie výslovnostného javu
transkripcia slov (nácvik, čítanie transkripcie)
spätná väzba od vyučujúceho
spätná väzba od spolužiakov
hry zamerané nácvik výslovnosti
poukázanie na výslovnostné chyby a ich dôsledky
Iné...

13. Výslovnosť si zlepšujem ...

Nápoveda k otázke: Označte všetky relevantné odpovede.

samoštúdiom pomocou učebníc s cvičeniami

pozeraním zábavných seriálov, filmov a videí
pozeraním inštruktážnych videí zameraných na výslovnosť
počúvaním hudby
komunikáciou s rodeným hovoriacim
 s iným spolužiakom
s iným učiteľom
vyhľadávaním si výslovnosti neznámych slov
využívaním nahrávok v elektronických/online slovníkoch
nijako
inak...

14. Sem môžete doplniť svoje ďalšie komentáre

a postrehy:
Appendix 4: Sample questionnaire answers (Item 10)
Chcem mať vlastný štýl. Chcem vedieť pekne vyslovovať ale zároveň
nenapodobnovať žiaden akcent zo žiadnej krajiny
Lebo to podľa môjho názoru nie je úplne možné, pokiaľ človek nežije v
zahraničí alebo nie je v dennom kontakte s native speakermi
britska anglictina je pre mna naj a preto by som sa k nej rada aspon trosku
priblizila
keď vyslovím niečo nesprávne, znižuje sa mi sebavedomie v speakingu
Neberiem to ako dôležité.
Lebo správna výslovnosť je súčasťou reči, ktorá ako celok bez jednej zo
svojich častí môže fungovať iba čiastočne.
Chcem sa tomu čo najviac priblížiť, ale nemyslím si, že v bežnej komunikácii
(mimo vyučovania) na tom až tak záleží
Lebo aj cudzinci učiaci sa slovenský jazyk majú svoj vlastný prízvuk,
nenapodobnuju ten náš. Pre native speakrov je náš prízvuk dobre
počúvateľný.
Správna výslovnosť je neoddeliteľná súčasť jazyka
Tak u nás všetko vedie k Oxford English, maturity sú podľa tohto štandardu.
To sa mne už nikdy nepodarí, som príliš starý, ale chcel by som sa čo najviac
zlepšiť.
Pride mi to prirodzenejsie
Treba sa zamerať na zrozumiteľnú komunikáciu, nie na stopercentnú
imitáciu výslovnosti
Výslovnosť je dôležitá a taktiež človek znie viac profesionálne, ak sa ich
výslovnosť aspoň trochu približuje k výslovnosti rodených hovoriacich.
Cítim sa tak viac sebavedomejšia a ludia, ktorí sú Native speakeri mi lepšie
porozumeju.
Keďže slovenský jazyk a výslovnosť sa od anglickej dosť líši, myslím si, že
dosiahnuť úplne 100% výslovnosť ako rodený hovoriaci je veľmi náročné.
Bol, a stále je to môj cieľ.
Pretože vtedy reálne človek zvládne jazyk ako taký
Aby sa jazyk co najviac priblizil autentickemu jazyku
Znie to prirodzenejšie. Lepšie sa to počúva.
kvôli porozumeniu toho, čo hovorím
Nie je možné imitovat iba jeden spôsob výslovnosti (Britská, americká,
australská, indická...)
viacero aspektov iných typov AJ (napr. US) sa spolu prelína a rodení jedinci
si uvedomujú túto skutočnosť
Aby reč znela plynulo a spontánne.
Na svete je toľko národnosti hovoriace anglickým jazykom a ani v Británii
nerozprávajú domáci rodený anglicania strednej aj vyššej vrstvy spisovne
aby mi daný ľudia dokázali čo najlepšie porozumieť a cítili sa komfortne pri
komunikacií so mnou
Zbytočne sa snažiť o nemožné veci. Takejto výslovnosti sa dá priblížiť, no
vždy bude počuť accent.
Nejde o to, aby som mala výslovnosť ako rodený hovoriaci, ale o to, aby bolo
slovo vyslovené správne a zrozumiteľne.
Je to relativne, kazdy hovori mierne odlisne.
Páči sa mi, ako to znie; ľudia si myslia, že nie som Slovák; príde mi to
profesionálnejšie; vadí mi keď niekto nevie slovensky vyslovovať, tak aj pret
Ako rodený hovoriaci je veľmi neprvdepodobné, že by som sa naučila, no
snažila by som sa čo najviac k tomu priblížiť,aby nedošlo k prípadným
nedoruzum
Lebo to nikdy nebudem, tak nebudem ani takto premýšľať
Výslovnosť slov je v slovníkoch uvádzaná podľa výslovnosti spisovného
štandardu cieľoveho jazyka a tento štandard je pre mňa východiskom.
Lebo ma to teší
je to prirodzenejšie, krajšie a profesionálnejšie
Nechcem mať iný/zahraničný prízvuk
Nehanbim sa za svoj prizvuk
Title: PRONUNCIATION PRACTICES IN EFL LEARNING:
PERSPECTIVES OF TEACHERS AND STUDENTS

Author: Mgr. Hana Vančová, PhD.

Reviewers: prof. PaedDr. Silvia Pokrivčáková, PhD.
prof. Zuzana Straková, PhD.
PaedDr. Rastislav Metruk, Ph.D.

Language editor: Phil Le Mottee

Edition: first edition
Publisher: Gaudeamus Hradec Králové
Print: Publica Nitra
Published in: 2020

ISBN: 978-80-7435-805-0
Pronunciation is one of the language layers English teachers are
reluctant to teach and learners view as a challenge to study,
even if it belongs to the most essential elements of spoken
communication. On the contrary, the research interest in
pronunciation teaching has grown since the beginning of the 21st
century. as a result, necessary steps must be taken for the
teachers to share this enthusiasm with researchers. This
publication aims to provide the views of teachers of phonetics
and phonology, pre-service teachers of English and the current
trends in pronunciation training to possibly clarify the main
differences among these actors of educational process and to
formulate recommendations that would be beneficial for the
sphere of pronunciation teaching.

ISBN 978-80-7435-805-0

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