TY - JOUR
AU - Marks, Jonathan
AB - Introduction My first close encounter with a language other than English came at the age of nine, as one of the guinea pigs in an experiment to introduce French into UK primary schools. In those early lessons, I particularly liked listening to the teacher make those foreign sounds, and trying to make them myself. I can still hear a distant echo of her voice, and I’m still sure her pronunciation was good. So, too, was that of my French teachers at grammar school. However, some of my classmates never acquired a French voice, pronouncing French exactly as if they were speaking English, and the teachers, although they did a good job in other respects, had no methodology for teaching pronunciation; the only help they could offer pupils was to encourage them to try again, and again. Later, on a distant ancestor of the CELTA course, embarking on what would become my career in English language teaching, I began to learn a methodology for teaching English pronunciation; we were introduced to English sounds, stress, features of connected speech and intonation, and some basic classroom techniques for teaching these. This introduction, although inevitably minimal, proved to be a sound foundation. Little attention was paid, however, to how pronunciation work could be integrated into lessons, and this compartmentalization was also evident in the scanty published pronunciation teaching resources available at that time, which were largely unconcerned with opportunities to highlight and practise the pronunciation of the language presented in a unit or lesson—principally the grammar, in those days—or with embodying useful, usable language, to say nothing of considering the significance of pronunciation for listening comprehension, the relationship between pronunciation and spelling, or the influence of L1 on pronunciation. Here, for example, is a dialogue designed to practise ‘stress-timing’ from Mortimer (1976: 14): A /Jonathan’s an / irritating / fellow, but he’s / necessary. B /Irritating? A /Irritating. B /Necessary? A /Necessary. B /Certainly he’s / useful, but I / wonder if he’s necessary? This text is actually a script for a stylized performance, only indirectly related to English as usually spoken. In the late 1970s, the communicative approach became increasingly influential, at least in published professional discourse about English language teaching. A paradox of this approach was that in subordinating ‘accuracy’ to ‘fluency’, it overlooked the fact that pronunciation can be an immediate, insurmountable barrier to communication unless it has a degree of accuracy in terms of conformity to some recognized, or at least recognizable, system—‘recognized’ in the sense of standard, codified, and widely circulated, and ‘recognizable’ in the sense that listeners can tune in and perceive systematicity even if the details of the system are initially unfamiliar. The communicative approach was, in origin, primarily a British development (Howatt 1984) and arose, therefore, in a typically multilingual teaching context where, apart from the general equivocal attitude to accuracy, there was probably a pragmatic reason for the neglect of pronunciation: pronunciation is the area of language where L1 interference is most resistant to teaching, and it would be difficult to specify, let alone address, the pronunciation needs of a group of, say, fifteen learners with a dozen different first languages. It might also have been assumed that ‘negotiation of meaning’ in pair and group work would be sufficient to resolve communication problems resulting from pronunciation, just as much as those from any other cause. Whatever the reasons, pronunciation was relegated to a subservient role in communicative syllabuses, methodology, and materials. Writings by early proponents of the communicative approach—see, for example, the papers in Brumfit and Johnson (1979)—contain little or no mention of pronunciation. And so pronunciation became, and long remained, the most popular contender for the Cinderella role in the story of English language teaching. Now, however, it seems that Cinderella is finally getting her chance to attend the ball. During the last two decades there has been a steady stream of writings about pronunciation, of which the five books reviewed here are representative. Whether there has been a concomitant shift in the importance allocated to pronunciation in teacher training and teaching is more difficult to assess; many teachers’ pedagogic decisions are determined principally by their coursebooks, and although modern coursebooks generally do include some focus on pronunciation, this is often inadequately integrated with the rest of the material and/or relegated to an obscure corner of an end-of-unit page: the obvious candidate for omission if time is short, especially if teachers feel ill-equipped to make effective use of the material. Pronunciation teaching continues to be an area that teachers frequently report as an Achilles’ heel. Research (for an overview, see Ellis, 2008: 22) and casual observation both tell us that pronunciation is the area of language where accuracy—if understood as native-like accuracy, as it generally was until quite recently—is least likely to be achieved; McArthur (1998: 262) defines pronunciation as ‘[t]hat part of a student which is exactly the same at the end of a language course as at the beginning’. Recent writings, as we shall see, take a different approach to the purposes and goals of pronunciation teaching. I begin this survey by considering The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary English Pronunciation, the most wide-ranging and substantial book of those under review, an edited volume of thirty-five chapters. The following four titles provide more in-depth treatments of issues adumbrated in the Handbook. English Pronunciation Teaching and Research aims to help teachers to see the relevance of research, while situating pronunciation in the context of twenty-first-century communication, identity, and presentation of self. Intelligibility, Oral Communication, and the Teaching of Pronunciation explores the concept of intelligibility and its importance for speaking and listening. The two remaining titles are concerned more directly with issues of classroom methodology. Discourse Intonation: A Discourse-Pragmatic Approach to Teaching the Pronunciation of English describes a pedagogic model of intonation which also sets intonation in the broader context of communication. Finally, A Syllabus for Listening—Decoding illustrates how aspects of pronunciation inhibit comprehension of spontaneous speech, and how teachers can introduce ‘decoding’ into their teaching. The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary English Pronunciation Overview A few words, firstly, about the title. A handbook of contemporary English pronunciation might be expected to provide a comprehensive description of how English is pronounced in its current varieties. But this one doesn’t; in their Introduction, the editors give a more accurate indication of the scope, which covers issues related to pronunciation in general (not only English), how L1 pronunciation is acquired, and how L2 pronunciation can be taught. Content Section 1 is entitled ‘Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on Pronunciation’. Chapter 1, ‘Transfer, Contrastive Analysis and Interlanguage Phonology’ (Archibald), shows, with examples from various languages, how the long-familiar concepts of language transfer, contrastive analysis (CA), and interlanguage still have a lot to offer the study of L2 phonology acquisition, but need to be investigated in a more nuanced way, for example taking account of the role of CA in perception as well as production, and the importance of intake frequency as well as input frequency. Chapter 2, ‘Theoretical L2 Phonology’ (Eckman), overviews the field from the mid-twentieth century onwards. Eckman notes that even today ‘no serious theory of L2 phonology completely excludes the notion of NL [native language] influence on a learner’s error patterns’ (p. 28), although CA fails to account for all errors. He describes how, from CA, interest moved on to error systematicity as evidence of interlanguage rules, typological markedness as a determiner of learning difficulty, and the observations that features that differ between L1 and L2 may be easier to acquire than similar ones; accuracy of production is constrained by accuracy of categorical perception; and production varies with contextual and stylistic factors. Chapter 3, ‘An Overview of Phonetics for Language Teachers’ (Przedlacka), referring principally to English, introduces basic concepts (segment, articulator, sibilant, etc.) and describes speech production in detail (sometimes in unnecessary detail: teachers do not need to know where the cricothyroid ligament is). It also covers principles of transcription; contrastiveness, phonemes and allophones; phonotactics and syllable structure; stress and intonation; and pronunciation models. This chapter unfortunately falls into the trap of making oversimplified statements about intonation on the basis of invented examples rather than contextualized, naturally occurring instances (what Brazil (1995) calls ‘used language’). Chapter 4, ‘Phonological Development in First Languages’ (May, Zamuner, and Werker), is of less relevance to teachers of second languages, except for the observation that L1 phonology can act as a ‘powerful perceptual filter’ (p. 68) to a new phonological system, especially when L1 systems are ‘more unique from [sic]’ (ibid) those of L2. Chapter 5, ‘Second Language Pronunciation Learning: An Overview of Theoretical Perspectives’ (Foote and Trofimovich), notes the lack of a theoretical basis in pronunciation research—pronunciation is frequently neglected by second language acquistion theories. It summarizes the achievements and shortcomings of linguistic, psychological, interactionist, sociocultural, identity, and sociocognitive perspectives, appealing for a unified theoretical basis that could illuminate the roles of input, learners’ L1, explicit instruction, systematicity, variability, etc., and suggest pedagogic applications. Section 2 focuses on ‘Descriptions of English Pronunciations’. Chapter 6, ‘English Vowels and Consonants’ (Rogerson-Revell), describes articulations and their major variations, mentioning typical difficulties for learners of various L1s. Teachers may be confused by what might seem to be contradictory descriptions of the articulation of ‘plosives (or stops)’, and the missed opportunity to highlight the motivation for the two different terms. Chapter 7, ‘English Syllable Structure’ (Cardoso), introduces another topic unfamiliar to many teachers, drawing attention to learner difficulties due to different permissible consonant clusters in onset and coda positions in different languages. English has a relatively complex set of clusters, with the maximum syllable structure CCCVCCCC, exemplified by ‘strengths’ [strɛŋkθs]. It would have been worth pointing out, however, that in spontaneous speech clusters are subject to considerable reduction—‘strengths’ is likely to be realized as [strɛŋs], [strɛns], or [srɛns]—while ‘illegal’ clusters are generated by schwa deletion—e.g. ‘p’tentially’, ‘c’mmunicate’. ‘Recommendations for practice’ include using tongue-twisters containing ‘hard-to acquire codas … in environments that make them difficult to perceive and produce’ (p. 131); this seems to be a recommendation to make things unnecessarily difficult for learners! Chapter 8, ‘English Lexical Stress, Prominence and Rhythm’ (Setter and Sebina), discusses how we perceive ‘stress’ and distinguishes between lexical stress and ‘prominence’, which teachers often misleadingly call ‘sentence stress’. The authors summarize the development of descriptions of English lexical stress and the ongoing debate about stress-timing. Misplaced lexical stress can be severely detrimental to intelligibility, so ‘Recommendations for practice’ include teaching and practising predictable lexical stress rules, such as those involving suffixes, and using stress-timing in exercises, as a device for accustoming learners to the compression of unstressed syllables between stresses. Chapter 9, ‘Intonation and Language Learning’ (Wennerstrom), notes the crucial importance of intonation for communication, the lack of integration of intonation into English language teaching materials, and the lack of agreement among theorists as to how English intonation should be described, and illustrates how non-conformity to expected intonation choices in topic organization, information structure, and expressive and pragmatic meanings can compromise comprehensibility. The major pedagogic implication is that despite the challenges it poses, intonation should be introduced for both perception and production right from the start. The title of Chapter 10, ‘English Orthography as a Resource for Learners of English’ (Dickerson), is encouraging, given the common perception that English orthography is more of an obstacle than a resource. Dickerson argues that rather than strictly alphabetic, English spelling is morphographic: it ‘spells the same morpheme in the same way from word to word (e.g. -ed) and uses different spellings for different morphemes (e.g. write, wright, rite, right)’ and ‘communicates meaning directly to the eye, bypassing the sound system’ (p. 171). Except for highly frequent words, most spellings follow regular rules, and Dickerson illustrates how a number of such rules can be introduced to learners. Section 3, ‘Varieties of English Pronunciations’, begins with Chapter 11, ‘Standards of Pronunciation and Regional Accents’ (Hazen), which introduces variation due to phonetic environment, synchronic and diachronic variation, the emergence and development of regional and social accents, the role of accents in differentiating insiders from outsiders, and the arbitrariness of whether features become prestigious or stigmatized. It would have been useful to extend the scope to include the challenges that accent variation poses for learners. There is considerable overlap between Chapter 11 and Chapter 12, ‘The Fallacy of Standard English’ (Raihan and Deterding), in their treatment of historical changes in pronunciation and the illustrative examples used. However, Chapter 12 does include some implications for teaching and learning. It considers alternative pronunciation models, the emergence of new varieties, and the complexity of ‘intelligibility’ among a proliferation of English accents. However, some of the ‘Recommendations for practice’ are only pointers to areas requiring development. Teachers should ‘expose their students to many varieties’ (p. 214), but exposure is unlikely to suffice; learners probably need guidance in identifying features of accents. And how is ‘greater acceptance of local teachers who speak with their own educated, internationally intelligible varieties of English’ (p. 215) to be achieved? Chapter 13, ‘New Pronunciation En Route to World Englishes’ (Deterding and Gardiner), reiterates points about standardization and prestige accents before summarizing proposals for a lingua franca core (LFC) (Jenkins 2000) and some common features of new varieties of English (Kirkpatrick and Deterding 2011). It proceeds to a more detailed treatment of intelligibility, noting that native accents may be less intelligible internationally than non-native ones, that perceived intelligibility is influenced by positive or negative attitudes towards speakers, and that some ‘errors’, e.g. lack of vowel reduction (e.g. <polite> with /ɒ/) and unexpected stress placement (e.g. <chaotic>) ‘are rarely problematic in ELF interactions between NNS speakers’ (pp. 225–7); indeed, some non-nativelike features, such as avoidance of vowel reduction, can enhance intelligibility. So there seems little point in expecting learners to conform to NS norms in areas beyond the LFC. An English as a lingua franca (ELF) approach brings benefits such as using L1 as a resource rather than a hindrance, and recognizing that NNSs can be the best pronunciation teachers, by being models of the successful acquisition of an internationally intelligible accent and being able to empathize with their learners. However, the authors note that this approach has yet to find widespread acceptance among teachers, policymakers, and learners themselves in some contexts. Nor is ELF-based teaching universally appropriate; there are learners who have good reasons for aspiring to achieve a nativelike English. Following this theme, Chapter 14, ‘Instructional Models in the Global Context’ (Szpyra-Kozłowska), distinguishes models from goals, reviews controversies surrounding the choice of pedagogic models for different learning contexts, and considers advantages and disadvantages of four types of pronunciation models: native, nativized, non-native and multiple, concluding that ‘no one-size-fits-all policy can be applied to instructional models in the global context’ (p. 244). Section 4, ‘Pronunciation Instruction in Language Teaching’, starts with Chapter 15, on communicative language teaching (CLT), ‘Pronunciation Teaching in the pre-CLT Era’ (Baker). Baker concludes that ‘the fundamentals of pre-CLT approaches continue to have a lasting influence on how pronunciation is taught today’ (p. 249), despite pleas, made not least in many of the chapters of this book, for a focus on intelligibility rather than conformity to native pronunciation, for meaningful, contextualized practice, and for integration of pronunciation with other syllabus components. Chapter 16, ‘Pronunciation Teaching in the early CLT Era’ (Levis and Sonsaat), describes the decline of pronunciation in curricula, published materials, and teacher preparation from the early 1970s onwards (although the authors point out that pronunciation was never entirely neglected) and its later renaissance as a key component of intelligibility and communicative competence. Chapter 17, ‘Ethics and the Business of Pronunciation Instruction’ (Foote), offers a different perspective on pronunciation instruction, describing how the ‘pedagogical view’ has tended to move from the ‘nativeness principle’ to the ‘intelligibility principle’, while the ‘medical view’ taken by many of those offering ‘accent modification’ courses regards an L2 accent as a disorder, and the ‘business view’ is associated with the term ‘accent reduction’. Critical issues are lack of relevant qualifications and training among many providers of pronunciation instruction for profit, unregulated prices charged for services of uncertain quality, and advertising that makes exaggerated claims or preys on fears that social and professional disadvantages will result from an L2 accent. Chapter 18, ‘Teacher Training in the Teaching of Pronunciation’ (Murphy), a practically oriented and recommendation-rich chapter, points out, like many other chapters, that many teachers ‘feel both ill prepared and reluctant to teach pronunciation’ (p. 301). It suggests how this situation could be improved by including a review of available resources and clear recommendations for procedures to use in designing and implementing teacher preparation courses. Chapter 19, ‘The Efficacy of Pronunciation Instruction’ (Derwing), concludes that most key studies in the field are of limited value, focusing on accuracy or accentedness rather than comprehensibility or intelligibility, whereas ‘[t]he value of [pronunciation instruction], surely, should be determined by the extent to which it can improve communication’ (p. 320). Also, delayed post-tests can be difficult to arrange, but are essential in determining whether pronunciation instruction has a lasting effect. Derwing, like Murphy, notes that efficacy of instruction is limited by teacher reluctance and lack of confidence, arising from inadequate preparation or negative feelings about their own pronunciation, and by neglect to introduce pronunciation instruction at the earliest possible stage. The focus of Section 5 is ‘Current Issues in Pronunciation Research’. Chapter 20, ‘Pronunciation and Speaking’ (Newton), reviews research in task-based speaking, negotiation of form and meaning, language-related episodes, and corrective feedback. Pronunciation is underrepresented in this research, but appears to account for a small proportion of language-related episodes while resulting in a relatively high proportion of successful uptake; the same applies to corrective pronunciation feedback. Chapter 21, ‘Pronunciation and Listening’ (Cauldwell), subtitled ‘The Case for Separation’, argues for separate goals, models, and classroom activities for the two, since the ‘careful speech model’ embodied in most teaching materials gives learners a clear pronunciation target, but does not prepare them to cope as listeners with the unpredictability and unruliness of spontaneous speech. Learners are taught citation forms of words and straightforward rules of linking and assimilation, but not the ‘messiness’ of the stream of speech, where words take on unrecognizable ‘sound shapes’. (Cauldwell’s book reviewed below includes a more detailed description of the case for separation.) Chapter 22, ‘Pronunciation with Other Areas of Language’ (Jones), makes the point that ‘while other linguistic inadequacies may make an exchange difficult, incomprehensible pronunciation will literally stop the conversation’ (p. 370). Jones points out that pronunciation is often treated unsystematically, and not from a sufficiently early level, resulting in a need for later remedial treatment; there is a need for better teacher preparation, and for coursebook writers to integrate pronunciation better into other work. Chapter 23, ‘Pronunciation and Individual Differences’ (Hansen Edwards), reviews research into the effects of age, aptitude, affective variables, etc., on pronunciation. Differences interact in various ways; for example, there seems to be a sensitive period for L2 pronunciation acquisition before the age of five, but this can be later compensated for by instrumental and integrative motivation, explicit instruction, etc. Hansen Edwards suggests that future research should investigate the interaction of speaker and listener differences in judgements of intelligibility. Chapter 24, ‘Attitudes Towards Non-native Pronunciation’ (Lindemann and Campbell), reports not only that native-speaking listeners tend to evaluate non-native accents more negatively than standard native accents, but that non-native listeners often also do so, even when listening to speakers with their own L1; if learners rate speakers with the same accent as them as less intelligent or less educated than NSs, this presumably helps to understand the preference learners often express for aspiring to a native-like accent rather than an intelligible but recognizably non-native one. Attitudes towards non-native pronunciations show patterns based on non-linguistic factors such as class, nationality, and race, with large recent immigrant groups being particularly subject to negative ratings. Ratings are subject to change depending on how the speakers are presented; a feature may be evaluated differently depending on who the speaker is perceived to be. Negative attitudes can result in poorer comprehension and recall, as well as vice versa. The ‘Dimensions of Pronunciation’ considered in Chapter 25 (Munro) are accentedness (‘the degree of difference between the pronunciation of an utterance and a listener’s internalized representation of it’, p. 413), intelligibility (‘the match between the intention of the speaker and the response of the listener to speech passed through the transmission system’, p. 414), and comprehensibility (‘how easy it is to interpret the message’, p. 415). Shortcomings in intelligibility, which is essentially unrelated to accent and may result from features of the actual speech but also from imperfect listening skills or bias against the speaker, can cause anything from inconvenience to tragedy. Chapter 26, ‘Pronunciation in Discourse Contexts’ (Pickering), notes that until the 1970s, research and pedagogy were concerned primarily with segmental aspects of pronunciation. Research interest then developed in the roles of suprasegmental features in spoken discourse; an outline is given of Brazil’s (1997) model of discourse intonation. Measurements of suprasegmental features have been applied to learner speech and impressions of intelligibility, fluency, etc. However, pronunciation is still generally not taught in the context of extended discourse, and teaching materials still tend to give outdated explanations of intonational meaning. A more extended treatment of this topic can be found in Pickering’s book on discourse intonation reviewed below. Section 6 is on ‘Future Directions of Pronunciation’. Chapter 27, ‘Innovations in Pronunciation Teaching’ (Brinton), offers a more positive assessment than some earlier chapters of how pronunciation teaching responded to the advent of CLT, and describes how research is investigating the relationship between attainment and factors such as motivation and self-confidence, learner autonomy, strategy instruction, intelligibility in EFL interactions, and the impact of various suprasegmental features on intelligibility. Chapter 28, ‘Applying a Cognitive Linguistic Framework to L2 Pronunciation Teaching’ (Couper), suggests that cognitive linguistics offers two principal contributions to phonology: first, that phonology draws on the same cognitive abilities as other faculties of mind—e.g. categorization, perceptive combination, and conceptual combination; and second, that language, including phonology, is rooted in physical, social and cultural experience—e.g. phonemes are ‘mental sound images’ that illustrate exemplar-based categorization of phonetically dissimilar phenomena into categories with prototypical and peripheral members. Couper suggests that several underlying psychological constructs are applicable to language teaching (e.g. routinization; the ability to compare two structures and detect discrepancy; the ability to combine simpler structures into more complex ones) and suggests applications to pronunciation teaching including targeted training to accelerate category formation from multiple exposure to exemplars. Chapter 29, ‘Computer-Assisted Pronunciation Training’ (Hardison), discusses issues including the interpretation of displays as feedback on learner speech, the role of the instructor, demonstration of improvement, and participant perceptions of efficacy of training. Studies of various languages suggest that visual feedback in the form of computerized displays has great potential to benefit perception and production of segmental and suprasegmental features. Chapter 30, ‘Pronunciation Future in the Twenty-First-Century English-Speaking World’ (Timmis), reviews the debate concerning appropriate pronunciation norms for world Englishes and ELF, pointing out the need for further attitude surveys; surveys carried out suggest that learners in various contexts express a preference for a native accent as a target, and some teachers also express an aspiration for their learners to achieve a native accent. Two challenges arise: first, learners’ aspirations in learning English are not necessarily driven by a single immutable motivation and a clear vision of their likely future interactions; second, there is no reason to assume that learners feel their cultural identity is threatened by adopting a native accent. Timmis comes to the measured conclusion that the LFC represents a promising basis for informed decision-making. Chapter 31, ‘Assessment in Second Language Pronunciation’ (Kang and Kermad), notes that pronunciation assessment has followed shifts in prevailing assumptions about second language acquisition and recommendations for teaching methodology, becoming marginalized with the turn of attention to communicative competence, but that growing numbers of NNSs are preparing to study, teach, or work abroad, resulting in a need for appropriate ways of assessing proficiency, and that assessing ELF pronunciation presents greater challenges than ever. The nativeness principle still prevails in assessment: how can standardized international tests take account of intelligibility between users of World Englishes? Chapter 32, ‘Suprasegmental Aspects of Pronunciation in New Englishes’ (Low), illustrates how four New Englishes have developed their own rules of stress, rhythm, and intonation; some differences, e.g. lack of identifiable tonic prominence in Singapore English, may inhibit international intelligibility. Chapter 33, ‘Intelligibility in Global Contexts’ (Kaur), considers the paradox of international intelligibility in a global language with extensive variation, especially as definitions of ‘intelligibility’ and ‘comprehensibility’ vary. It is also unclear to what extent findings from experimental settings are applicable to ‘real-world’ contexts. The focus of Chapter 34, ‘Automatic Speech Recognition for Second Language Pronunciation Training’ (Cucchiarina and Strik), on detecting deviations from native speech seems rather out of key with other chapters, at least for English, though more appropriate for other languages, e.g. Dutch. Chapter 35, ‘Fully Automated Speaking Assessment’ (Isaacs), also focuses on ‘errors’. Automatic speech recognition has the advantage of objectivity in removing individual rater idiosyncrasies, but is poor at targeting prosody, and better at detecting features that may not be communicatively important. Evaluation This handbook is an impressive synthesis of scholarship in a wide range of topics related to the description, teaching, and learning of English pronunciation when the nature and role of English itself is subject to rapid change and intensive discussion. It raises key issues and areas for further research—some of which are developed in the remaining books reviewed here—notably the concept of intelligibility, the importance of both segmental and suprasegmental aspects in communication and expression of identity, the complexity of learner variables, the interaction of factors influencing learning difficulty, and the need for a variable, context-sensitive approach to the prioritization of goals, teaching methodology, and assessment. Although the thirty-five chapters are independent, stand-alone contributions, the editors could usefully have made themselves more present by pointing out links between chapters, perhaps adding more cross-chapter references (there are a few—for example in Chapter 15) and introductions to the six sections. They could also have intervened to eliminate unnecessary overlap; for example, Chapters 3 and 6 duplicate a considerable amount of material on articulation, though using different head diagrams and some different terminology, to the potential confusion of less experienced readers. In addition, there are inconsistencies in chapter design such as the tutorial element in Chapter 6 and the ‘Current contribution’ in Chapter 25. The book also contains quite a number of errata, especially in Chapter 6, for example, which point variously to lapses of vigilance on the part of authors, editors, or publisher. All of this is a shame, because it detracts from the quality of what is, as I have said above, an impressive achievement. English Pronunciation Teaching and Research Overview This book aims to encourage synergy between research and practice, and to show teachers how research is relevant to them. It takes a sociolinguistic approach, in the context of increasing multilingualism and English as an international language, viewing pronunciation as ‘a crucial component of communication, identity and the presentation of self’ (p. v). Content There are eight chapters. The first, ‘The Nature of Pronunciation’, reasserts the importance of pronunciation for communication, introduces basic concepts such as phonemes, syllables, stress, and intonation, and hints at the strategic wider value of pronunciation in expressing identity and affiliation and in academic and employment contexts, providing examples of pragmatic failure (at segmental and suprasegmental levels), stereotyping, and accent discrimination. Subsequent chapters focus on particular aspects of pronunciation in greater detail. Chapter 2, ‘Phonology in Language Teaching’, reviews differences between first and second language acquisition and the roles of language transfer, age, cognitive style, etc., in post-childhood pronunciation learning, particularly the difficulty of developing native-like pronunciation. Chapter 3, ‘Framing the Teaching of Pronunciation’, locates pronunciation teaching in the framework of the historical development of views of language and language pedagogy, from structuralism and audio-lingualism to the ‘growing emphasis … on pronunciation as a reflection of speaker agency, identity and affiliation’ (p. 120). It introduces such topics as the nature of models and goals, accent reduction and addition, the goal of intelligibility, and proposals for a core of features essential for mutual intelligibility between all users of English—and whether such an aim is achievable, since teaching the LFC might lead teachers to neglect social aspects of pronunciation. The authors discuss needs analysis, factors influencing what to prioritize—including functional load, which they note has so far found little application to teaching practice—and ‘impact’ (‘the speaker’s ability to use phonological features to make speech noteworthy to a listener or audience’, p. 152), with two case studies of instructional design for different contexts. They conclude, unsurprisingly, that it is ‘not realistic to take a monolithic approach’ (p. 162). Chapter 4, ‘Pronunciation in the Classroom: Teachers and Teaching Methods’, notes that pronunciation still tends to be marginalized in curricula and exams, and taught on an ad hoc basis. It considers attitudes and issues of identity that underlie teachers’ approach to pronunciation, learners’ perceptions of teacher pronunciation (e.g. the pronunciation of international teaching assistants), and teacher beliefs, knowledge and skills. The authors comment that teachers’ lack of training and confidence may lead them to rely on an intuition-based rather than an evidence-based approach, or on outdated methods and materials: ‘Survey research suggests that the most common techniques used in pronunciation teaching include spontaneous error correction, reading aloud, phonetics training, and listen and repeat’ (p. 201). They discuss the integration of pronunciation into other skills and language work, the question of segments first versus prosody first, and the importance of integrating a focus on pronunciation form into meaning-focused instruction, and they make suggestions for implicit and explicit form-focused instruction. Chapter 5, ‘Using Technology for Pronunciation Teaching, Learning and Assessment’, critically considers a range of applications and products for computer-assisted pronunciation teaching (CAPT) and assessment. Despite the enormous potential of CAPT with regard to multimodality, mobility, autonomy, and the provision of exposure and practice, many CAPT materials are driven by technology rather than pedagogy, and in some cases ‘sales are running ahead of educational value’ (p. 235). Computers lend themselves better to audiolingual-like practice than communicative methodology and customized feedback. Many visual feedback systems are designed for phoneticians, and the information they give may not be easily interpretable by teachers and learners. There has been little research into the long-term effectiveness of CAPT, and in the field of assessment, alignment between automatic speech recognition and human judgement remains a challenge. The starting point of Chapter 6, ‘Assessing Pronunciation’, is that globalization has multiplied the need for language assessment for study and employment purposes. But what should be tested, and how? The chapter reveals something of the intractable nature of these questions, and the fact that many issues arising are only now being considered, although ‘the testing of pronunciation has become big business with significant consequences for peoples’ lives and employment’ (p. 306). The authors suggest that pronunciation testing should include both ‘narrowly or autonomously oriented tasks involving auditory perception and imitation’ and ‘communicative tasks involving adjustment of pronunciation in response to factors of audience and context’ (p. 288). The former are more likely to achieve high reliability but only limited insight into speaker performance; the latter are likely to have greater validity, but the language produced is less predictable and more difficult to assess reliably. The authors point out shortcomings of both expert and non-expert raters, and of human and machine rating, review pronunciation assessment in widely used oral proficiency tests, and offer guidelines for pronunciation assessment in classroom practice. Chapter 7, ‘Beyond the Language Classroom: Wider Applications of Pronunciation Research and Practice’, emphasizes the role of pronunciation in mutual intelligibility in increasingly diverse communities and workplaces, and in expressing identity, status, values, and personality, and reviews research in this field, giving examples from international business meetings, the call-centre industry, and healthcare. Control of both segmental and suprasegmental aspects of pronunciation is seen as essential for successful communication. Meanwhile, advances in analysing and synthesizing speech have enabled developments in fields such as forensic phonetics, speech therapy, L1 literacy, assistive text-to-speech systems, and smart technologies. One controversial technological application is LADO (language analysis for the determination of origin), used in asylum and immigration screening. Finally, Chapter 8, ‘Relating Pronunciation Research and Practice’, reviews current research and remaining gaps, referring to topics raised in previous chapters. The fundamental questions concern what to teach—and what to prioritize—why to teach and how to teach effectively. Problems to be overcome include insufficient dissemination of research to teachers and other stakeholders, lack of empirical research into classroom discourse and spontaneous interactional discourse, insufficient clarity of such concepts as intelligibility, fluency—even ‘pronunciation’!—lack of interdisciplinary cross-fertilization, insufficient research into assessment of pronunciation as opposed to speaking generally, and lack of comparative research in other languages. Evaluation This book covers much of the same ground as the Routledge Handbook, such as continued pedagogic conservatism in the face of the development of English into a means of international communication increasingly disconnected from NS norms, and the need for research and practice to develop interconnectedly. Drawing widely on recent research, it presents a multifaceted account of English pronunciation in its current sociolinguistic, educational, economic, and technological contexts. It alerts teachers, who may still think of pronunciation as a minor component of their work, to the potential impact of pronunciation, and its evaluation by others, on peoples’ lives. It is extensively referenced—Chapter 2 alone has seventeen pages of references! – and thus acts as a gateway for readers wishing to explore the topics more deeply. Unfortunately, like the Routledge Handbook reviewed above, the book would have benefited from more careful editing; there is considerable unnecessary repetition between different sections of the text, as well as errors of various kinds: factual errors (e.g. the points about rhoticity in England on p. 13); typos (e.g. ‘Amalgum [sic] English’ on pp. 136, 138, 139), inconsistent British/American spelling, and others. Intelligibility, Oral Communication, and the Teaching of Pronunciation Overview The key word ‘intelligibility’, which appears frequently in the Routledge Handbook, takes centre stage in this book, which argues that pronunciation, for speakers and listeners, is a vital contributor to communication and the expression of attitudes and identity, and merits thorough treatment in a truly ‘communicative’ approach to teaching, in integration with other aspects of English. A focus on intelligibility has implications for which elements of pronunciation to prioritize; in the era of English as a global language, efforts must be made to ensure intelligibility between all users of the language, whatever their L1 background. Content The book has four sections. The two chapters in Part I, ‘A Framework for the Teaching of Spoken Language’, survey the ground covered by the book. Chapter 1, ‘Intelligibility, Comprehensibility and Spoken Language’, distinguishes between intelligibility and accentedness, and between intelligibility (actual understanding at the lexical, semantic, and pragmatic levels) and comprehensibility (the degree of effort involved in understanding). Levis points out that NS pronunciation varies as well as NNS pronunciation, but that NNS pronunciations are more likely to be outside the range of familiar NS varieties, and to be combined with unexpected grammatical and lexical choices. He introduces the concept of a necessary threshold level of intelligibility, and adumbrates a discussion of the relative importance of segmental and suprasegmental features. Teachers tend to judge error gravity in terms of features that are easy to notice, identify and name, e.g. the notorious ‘th’ sounds, but these may not be significant for intelligibility; segmental deviations in general may be more tangible than suprasegmentals, but trying to correct them may be ‘the equivalent of putting a bandage on a scratch when the accident victim is having trouble breathing’ (p. 29). Additionally, the greatest improvement to intelligibility may result from attention to a minority of errors. English is used by people from different language backgrounds and with differing experiences of the language, so ‘[i]ntelligibility is a two-way street’ (p. 22). This has implications for word-based features, e.g. unaspirated initial /p/ may be heard by a NS as /b/, and reduced vowels may be hard for NNSs to interpret. Discourse-based features such as intonation, pausing, voice quality, and ‘liveliness’, which is especially a matter of pitch range, are also subject to misinterpretation; an unexpectedly narrow range is likely to be interpreted not as linguistically wrong, but as a social failing, leading to stigmatization and irritation. Pronunciation is especially important for intelligibility as the ‘first stop’, and often forms the basis for judgements about educatedness, for example. Chapter 2, ‘Setting Priorities: What Teachers and Researchers Say’, outlines the distinction between the nativeness principle (NP), which assumes that any deviation from native-like norms is to be corrected, and the intelligibility principle (IP), which prioritizes some features at the expense of others. The former is nowadays widely considered both unnecessary and unattainable for the majority of learners, but survives among large numbers of learners and teachers. The latter has the disadvantage of being harder to specify, especially as it takes context(s), plus teachability and learnability, into account. It is no surprise, therefore, that there is no unanimity concerning exactly what its practical consequences should be: Levis summarizes thirteen sets of recommendations, dating from 1987 to 2012, for what should be prioritized, and in some cases what should be excluded, with notes on the reasoning they are based on; until Jenkins (2000) these all assumed—rather quaintly, it now seems—that the speaker was a NNS and the listener a NS. Part II, ‘Word-Based Errors and Intelligibility’, opens with Chapter 3, ‘Segmentals and Intelligibility’. The chapter begins with the observation that ‘the perception and production of vowels and consonants has to be sufficiently accurate to activate the speaker’s intended vocabulary in the mind of the listener’ (p. 61) and discusses the relative gravity of segmental error types; different types may co-occur, compounding overall impact on intelligibility and comprehensibility. The good news is that adults, as well as children, can and do continue to develop new L2 sound categories; segmental problems related to perception and production of L2 phonemic categories have been found to be amenable to mitigation by training with an explicit focus on form. In listening to NSs, NNSs also need to interpret words pronounced with considerable distortion and elision of sounds, a theme pursued in Chapter 4, ‘Consonant Clusters and Intelligibility’, which considers how cluster simplification affects intelligibility by altering syllable structure. Chapter 5 ‘Word Stress and Intelligibility’ concludes that misplaced word stress has an adverse effect on intelligibility; in fact ‘stress may be a greater source of reliability for word recognition than segmental information’ (p. 124), at least for NS listeners; less is known about the importance of word stress in ELF interactions. Word stress in English is marked by duration, pitch, intensity, and vowel quality, and the L1 can influence which of these are most salient. Vowel quality is a particularly reliable marker, whereas pitch is a strong marker only in prominent syllables. Moving primary stress to an alternative stressed syllable in a word is less of a threat to intelligibility than stressing a normally unstressed syllable, which tends to entail a change from a weak to a strong vowel. Rightward stress shift, e.g. foLLOW, is a greater threat to intelligibility than leftward shift, e.g. CONtain, and context may not necessarily help in identifying a mis-stressed word. Part III, ‘Discourse-Based Errors and Intelligibility’, opens with Chapter 6, ‘Rhythm and Intelligibility’. Here Levis suggests that the significance of rhythm is its possible effect on comprehensibility rather than intelligibility, as an unfamiliar rhythm tends to make speech more difficult to process, for both NS and NNS listeners. For NS listeners, at least, rhythm is vitally important for identifying the beginnings of words. ELF speakers will have different rhythmic expectations, depending on their L1. Even if it is unnecessary for learners to acquire inner-circle rhythm in their production, it remains important for understanding NS speech. Explicit instruction in features of rhythm can improve intelligibility, and instruction in production can improve perception. Chapter 7, ‘Intonation and Intelligibility: the Roles of Prominence and Tune’, focuses on these two features as most relevant to intelligibility, at least for NNSs who interact with NSs. Levis concludes that these aspects of intonation are likely to be significant not for the intelligibility of words, but for understanding turn-taking, information structure, implicatures, sarcasm, etc., when the L1s of interlocutors use non-intonational means to express these, or when their L1s use similar intonational forms for different purposes, so that messages may appear to lack coherence even if all the words are correctly identified. Part IV, ‘Teaching and Research Approaches to Intelligibility’, opens with Chapter 8, ‘Teaching for Intelligibility: Guidelines for Setting Priorities’, which presents and elaborates on six such guidelines: 1. Features that have an explicit connection to communication and to other areas of language should be prioritized. 2. Mispronunciations that cause difficulties in processing should be given priority. 3. The pronunciation of important lexical items should be given priority over less important items. 4. Errors that carry a high functional load should be prioritized over those that do not. 5. More frequent errors are more important than less frequent errors. 6. Features that are learnable should be prioritized over those that are not. (p. 186) The fact that pronunciation is typically allotted only a small proportion of classroom time makes it particularly important to set priorities wisely, and more research is needed to validate and refine the six recommendations. Chapter 9, ‘The Intelligibility-Based Classroom’, outlines different views of pronunciation taken by successive approaches to English language teaching since the 1970s, noting, like other books and chapters in this review, that the communicative approach, in particular, considered that a pronunciation adequate for successful communication would take care of itself; native-like pronunciation was unlikely to be achieved, and thus not worth aiming for. In time, however, there was a realization than pronunciation not only could be improved, but might need to be for ensuring intelligibility. Presenting a summary of differences between the NP and the IP, Levis suggests that one of the attractions of the NP is that it has a definite target, albeit one unlikely to be achieved, while the IP cannot specify a single target for all learners in all contexts. Nine often unstated assumptions of the NP are listed, including these: all learners can and should achieve a native-like accent, and this is possible by listening and repetition with no need for social interaction; some native accents are better than others; foreign accents cause misunderstandings; pronunciation problems can be predicted by contrastive analysis; controlled practice will result in transfer to spontaneous speech. These principles are, however, borne out neither by classroom experience nor by research; the NP is ‘both unrealistic and doomed to failure’ (p. 229) other than for exceptional learners, and an intelligibility-based approach offers a more certain basis for success. Nine contrasting principles of the IP include: pronunciation can always improve, regardless of age; achievement of a native-like accent is possible but most likely to result from intensive social interaction; intelligibility and accent are independent variables; instruction in suprasegmentals may lead to particularly quick improvements in intelligibility, but segmentals are also important; intelligibility is matter of perception as well as production. Chapter 10, ‘What Should and Should Not Be Taught: An Intelligibility-Based Approach’, recognizes the value of the LFC (Jenkins 2000) as a starting point, but emphasizes the need for sensitivity to context in deciding what to include and exclude. The LFC is proposed as specifically applicable to interactions between NNSs and, as Jenkins recognizes, will not necessarily be appropriate for interactions between NNSs and NSs, something that has not always been recognised by the LFC’s critics. An obvious complication is that it is not possible to predict who learners will need to interact with in their future lives. Levis considers that perception, in various types of spoken discourse and not just in individual words, should be a priority, because learners may need to understand other NNSs from different language backgrounds and at different proficiency levels, and also perhaps NSs with different accents. It has also been shown that perception can in itself lead to improvement in production. Levis gives a lengthy list of various types of items to prioritize, including professional vocabulary and personal names, logical phrasing, vowel lengthening before voiced consonants and in open syllables, and avoidance of unexpected elisions and epenthesis. Evaluation This book argues persuasively and in well-supported detail for a fundamental shift to a new starting point for pronunciation teaching: from the nativeness principle to the intelligibility principle. While pointing out that a great deal more research is needed, it demonstrates convincingly how research findings so far can inform decisions made by teachers and materials writers. It will repay careful reading by anyone in search of an answer to: pronunciation—quo vadis? Discourse Intonation: A Discourse-Pragmatic Approach to Teaching the Pronunciation of English Overview This book deals with a much more circumscribed topic: the pedagogic application of a model of English intonation first proposed by David Brazil (e.g. Brazil, 1997). It consists of an introduction and ten chapters, each with ‘Check Your Learning’ questions and ‘Activities’; supporting sound files are available online. In her introduction, Pickering reports teachers’ feelings of unease and lack of preparedness for teaching intonation, despite its importance for the impression speakers make on listeners; Chapter 1 has a telling example of how intonation forms and functions differ between languages and indeed between dialects, and listeners often ascribe their instinctive reactions to unexpected intonation to non-linguistic factors. Content Chapter 1, ‘The Intonation System of English’, gives a concise overview of the history of descriptions of English intonation—from 1775 onwards!—contrasting British and American approaches. In Chapter 2, ‘A Discourse-Pragmatic Approach to Intonation: An Overview of Brazil’s Model of Discourse Intonation’, the author then provides a more detailed introduction to the model which forms the subject matter of the book, emphasizing its pragmatic nature in contrast with earlier descriptions of intonation: ‘[T]he meaning of the intonation system is not located in the grammatical structure or emotive content of language … intonation choices function within a context and lose their significance when this context is reduced or eradicated’ (p. 19). The chapter outlines the four constituent systems of the model: division of speech into tone units; highlighting of contextually key information in these units by assigning prominence to certain syllables; choice of pitch pattern on the tonic prominence of a unit; and choice of the pitch height of the tonic prominence and other prominent syllables, if any. Importantly, Pickering emphasizes that intonation is best viewed ‘as a probabilistic system rather than as a deterministic system’ (p. 31); our knowledge of a context allows us to predict what intonation is likely, but speakers make their own choices. For example, pitch concord (p. 64) is used as a means of showing affiliation or alignment, but may be broken by a speaker who unexpectedly elects to signal disagreement. The next three chapters describe the four systems in greater detail. Chapter 3, ‘Segmenting the Speech Stream: Tone Units’, describes how segmentation is achieved by a combination of prominence and pausing. Prominence is used to highlight new information, to express contrast, to contradict, and to express enthusiastic agreement. Pausing is especially evident in prepared speech; in conversation, there may be lengthy sequences of tone units devoid of perceptible pauses, and pitch cues may be a more reliable indicator of tone unit division. Chapter 4, ‘Identifying New and Old Information: Tone Choice’, summarizes the use of falling or ‘proclaiming’ tones (including fall and rise–fall) to indicate new information, completion, authority, or exclusivity, and the use of rising or ‘referring’ tones (including rise and fall–rise) to indicate shared knowledge, continuation, solidarity, or inclusivity. A fifth tone, level or slightly rising, is used when there is no intention to convey any such pragmatic message, for example at moments of hesitation. Although speakers generally make use of this tone system to project a context for their listener(s), for example what is assumed to be familiar or unfamiliar, there are some lexical expressions and routines, such as lists and telephone numbers, that tend to have prefabricated intonation patterns. Chapter 5, ‘Using Your Voice’s Pitch Range: Key and Termination’, describes how speakers select high, mid or low pitch on the onset, or first prominent syllable, of a tone unit (choice of key) and on the tonic prominence (choice of termination). Through choices at these selection points, speakers mark information as simply adding to the established context, as contrastive (e.g. to contradict or to deliver news that is surprising or contrary to what is expected) or as unsurprising, only to be expected. Chapter 6, ‘The Social Life of Intonation’, exemplifies how speakers exploit intonation choices, for example by selecting the ‘dominant’ rise–fall and rise in preference to the ‘non-dominant’ fall and fall–rise in order to take on a controlling role in the interaction. ‘Dominance’, in this sense, has no negative connotations, but is appropriate in situations where one participant is more knowledgeable than the other, or has an institutional and mutually accepted right to direct the discourse. Classroom discourse is one such type of asymmetric interaction which has been extensively studied. Differences in intonational choices between speakers of traditional Englishes (Kachru’s (1985) ‘inner circle’) and emerging Englishes (Kachru’s ‘expanding circle’), and lack of awareness of such differences and their pragmatic effects can be a major factor in causing misunderstanding and lack of rapport. Chapter 7, ‘Variation between Traditional and New Varieties of English’, focusing particularly on Indian English, considers how intonational cues in one variety may have a different significance, or may be entirely absent, in another. This can have a detrimental effect on communication, cooperation, and negotiation, especially because differences in intonation are less likely to be noticed as such than differences of vocabulary, for example, and may therefore lead to incomprehension or misinterpretation, or irritation based on attribution to inferred attitudes such as ‘uncooperativeness’ or ‘rudeness’. Chapter 8, ‘Variation between Traditional Englishes and English as a Lingua Franca’, suggests, on the basis of what little research has been carried out to date, that speakers in ELF interactions make systematic use of intonational cues to express informational meanings such as prominence, continuation, and closure, but not the interpersonal functions that feature in traditional Englishes as a means of establishing and maintaining personal relationships, such as the use of rising tones or pitch concord to avoid overt disagreement, contradiction, or confrontation. Chapter 9, ‘Teaching Discourse Intonation’, begins by noting the continuing gap between intonation research and classroom practice, and goes on to reject the frequently made claims that intonation is ‘unteachable’ and ‘unlearnable’. A considerable number of studies attest to the effectiveness of instruction in aspects of pronunciation including intonation at all proficiency levels and in different contexts. Finally, a number of possible classroom activities are suggested. Finally, Chapter 10, ‘Putting It All Together’, summarizes some key features of the model of intonation presented in the book: it is probabilistic but systematic, speaker-controlled and hearer-sensitive, it works within a discourse context, it varies across varieties of English, and it should and can be taught, with sensitivity to learners’ different contexts and needs. Evaluation Ever since attending workshops with David Brazil in the 1980s, I have found discourse intonation to be the model of English intonation which corresponds most closely with what I actually hear, and which offers a pedagogically plausible approach to an aspect of pronunciation that initially seems intangible. This short book provides an admirably concise and accessible presentation of discourse intonation, drawing on more recent research, taking account of the rise of ELF, and showing that the model has not lost its validity in spite of more recent developments in our understanding of what ‘English’ is. It makes a persuasive case for discourse intonation as a teachable and learnable model which will enable learners to express themselves more effectively and understand their interlocutors’ communicative intentions more reliably, and will be an excellent starting point for teachers wishing to explore and implement this model. A Syllabus for Listening—Decoding Overview I was trained, like a lot of teachers, to think of listening and reading as ‘receptive skills’, but this term is clearly misleading, since receiving something—an email, a parcel, a present—normally requires neither skill nor effort, yet even learners who reach a high level of proficiency in other skills often struggle to understand what Cauldwell calls the ‘sound substance’ of spontaneous speech. This book explains why this is so, and proposes activities to add a crucial extra dimension to listening lessons and prepare learners for their encounters with spoken English outside the classroom—spoken English which has not been scripted, rehearsed or selected, which has to be apprehended in real time, as it is produced, and where the priming and support typically provided in listening lessons by pre-teaching, schema activation, the attention-focusing of comprehension questions, etc., are not usually available. Content The gist of Cauldwell’s argument is as follows. The similarity of generally recommended methodology for reading and listening work in ELT fails to take account of key differences between speech and writing, and the different decoding requirements they impose. The premise of this book is that speech styles vary along a continuum from the ‘Greenhouse’ (the domain of citation forms) via the ‘Garden’ (where well-known and predictable processes of ‘connected speech’ operate) to the ‘Jungle’, where words mutate and intertwine in luxuriant and unpredictable profusion. The Garden is an appropriate model for learners to use when working on their own pronunciation, but when it comes to listening they need to be able to find their way through the Jungle. All words—not only those few generally recognized as having ‘weak forms’—are ‘flexiforms’ which can appear in unpredictable guises in the Jungle. The speed of spontaneous speech varies constantly; commonly occurring word clusters such as ‘Do you know what I mean?’ tend to be spoken particularly fast, and the phonetic substance in them is subject to particularly drastic erosion or ‘streamlining’, which largely erases the identity of the words they appear, in writing, to consist of. Streamlining and the resulting indeterminacy in the sound substance can even obliterate such fundamental syntactic and semantic distinctions as positive versus negative, active versus passive, and present versus past. As experienced ‘expert listeners’, our acquired ability to understand speakers’ meanings deafens us to what actually happens in spontaneous speech. What we hear, or rather what we think we hear, is based on acoustic scraps and hints plus expectations, choices between alternative interpretations on the basis of which ones seem more or less likely, and so on. This makes it hard for us to appreciate the difficulties less experienced listeners face. The hints provided by the sound substance can often be interpreted in different ways, more or less plausible or implausible. In one classroom listening activity reported by the author, learners heard ‘we don’t have many’ as ‘we have many’, ‘fifteen hundred’ as ‘fifty hundred’ and ‘pupils’ as ‘peoples’. Although, in the context, all of these clearly conflicted with the speaker’s meaning, they were what the author calls ‘reasonable hearings’, rather than mishearings, of the sound substance—hearings which expert listeners more or less automatically discard in favour of reasonable interpretations; for example, the author reports hearing a cricket commentator on the radio apparently say, before handing over to a colleague, ‘I’m completely sober’, and concluding that a reasonable interpretation was ‘I’ll complete this over’. It also sometimes happens that even expert listeners fail to come up with any reasonable interpretation at all of what they hear, and such experiences, together with ‘sober’ moments, provide glimpses of the plight of learner listeners, who are less willing to discard initial interpretations in favour of more plausible ones, and in any case less likely to have the knowledge of English to recognize, for example, either ‘sober’ or the particular use of ‘over’ as a noun in cricket. Decoding work can both stand on its own and be incorporated into conventional listening skills lessons, for example in the form of extended ‘post-listening’ stages. Adding a decoding dimension to listening work requires due attention to the need for learner education and teacher self-education. Specific methodological recommendations include working with the ‘speech unit’ as the unit of perception—because ‘you need to hear more than a word to recognise a word’—and particularly with commonly occurring word clusters, because these are particularly subject to ‘streamlining’. Teachers should accept that different listeners can hear different things in the stream of speech, rather than dismissing alternative hearings as failures or mishearings. ‘Vocal gymnastics’ can be used to reproduce stretches of Jungle speech, not for learners’ own pronunciation but to sensitize them to what they hear. Traditional procedures such as dictation and gap-filling can be used for practice in decoding very short recorded extracts of spontaneous speech. New vocabulary can be introduced in phrases and collocations complete with ‘Greenhouse’ effects. The text is divided into short sections, and key points are reiterated throughout, with numerous recorded examples; these features of the text will make it particularly accessible to readers unfamiliar with the phenomena described. Traditional terminology is eschewed in favour of more informal and perhaps more attractive and memorable metalanguage such as ‘mush’ (‘the messy areas of the sound substance where it is difficult to determine where words begin and end, or indeed whether they have occurred at all’), ‘polarisk’ (an occasion when ‘the sound substance is such that it is difficult to determine whether a positive or negative word form was intended by the speaker’) and ‘Tuesday-blend’ (more formally ‘yod coalescence’, e.g. ‘chewsday’ for ‘Tuesday’). Some use is made of phonemic and phonetic transcription, but informal respellings of sections of stretches of Jungle speech such as ‘diiin’ (did it in), ‘ashy’ (actually), ‘anen’ (and then), ‘ever noise’ (everyone always) are also used for a more dramatic and reader-friendly impact. The final chapter (updated on the Speech in Action website) introduces internet and digital resources that can be used for decoding work. Evaluation The author describes this book as ‘essential reading’ for teachers, teacher trainers, and materials writers—a rather immodest claim, but justified, I think. The book presents many startling insights into what spontaneously spoken English actually sounds like, in contrast to the manufactured samples typically presented in published materials, and into what ‘listening skills’ entail beyond the well-known standard classroom procedures for listening tasks; it also makes practical recommendations for helping learners to negotiate the apparently impenetrable jungle of speech. It includes a useful Glossary of terms invented and/or repurposed by the author; an index would also have been a helpful addition to the book. Pronunciation—Towards a Golden Age? As I remarked at the beginning of this survey review, the five titles represent something of a renaissance of interest in pronunciation in recent times, and illustrate a number of common themes, concerns, and recommendations, including the folllowing: Pronunciation is entailed not only in the successful communication of information but also, for better or worse, in the expression of identity, presentation of self, relationship-building, and how people perceive and judge one another. In the era of English as a global lingua franca, new parameters are needed for setting appropriate pronunciation teaching goals, and these parameters need to be flexible and context-sensitive. There is a need to reassess the relative competence of native and non-native speakers as models and teachers of pronunciation, and to reconsider terminology such as ‘error’, ‘mistake’, and ‘deviation’. Intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness are distinct constructs. In particular, there is no necessary correlation between accentedness and intelligibility. Intelligibility is co-constructed by speakers and listeners. Teachers should have different expectations regarding what learners are able to produce themselves and what they may need to interpret in listening to spontaneous speech. It is important to integrate pronunciation with other skills and areas of the syllabus, from the earliest stages of instruction, and to include a specific focus on form as well as devoting attention to pronunciation in meaning-focused classroom activities. Both segmental and suprasegmental aspects of pronunciation are important in various ways. Neglected areas such as functional load and syllable structure are important for prioritization and understanding learner difficulty. Evolving technology is likely to play a greater role in supporting learning, teaching, and assessment. There is a continuing need for two-way communication between research and practice, and for greater attention to teacher preparation and the instilling of teacher confidence. In the Routledge Handbook, Derwing suggests that we are now ‘entering a golden age’ for pronunciation instruction (p. 330). Whether this is so remains to be seen, but the books reviewed here suggest, at least, a notable revival of interest and a new conception of the significance of pronunciation for learners and of how pronunciation might be approached in theory, in teacher training, in teaching materials, and in classroom methodology. References Brazil , D . 1995 . A Grammar of Speech. Oxford : Oxford University Press . Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC Brazil , D . 1997 . The Communicative Value of Intonation in English (Second edition). Cambridge : Cambridge University Press . Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC Brumfit , C. J. and K. Johnson (eds). 1979 . The Communicative Approach to Language Teaching. Oxford : Oxford University Press . Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC Ellis , R . 2008 . The Study of Second Language Acquisition (Second edition). Oxford : Oxford University Press . Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC Howatt , A. P. R . 1984 . A History of English Language Teaching. Oxford : Oxford University Press . Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC Jenkins , J . 2000 . The Phonology of English as an International Language . Oxford : Oxford University Press . Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC Kachru , B. B . 1985 . ‘The Bilingual’s Creativity.’ Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 6: 20 – 33 . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press . Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC Kirkpatrick , A. and D. Deterding. 2011 . ‘World Englishes.’ In The Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics , edited by J. Simpson. 373 – 87 . London : Routledge . Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC McArthur , T . 1998 . Living Words: Language, Lexicography and the Knowledge Revolution. Exeter : University of Exeter Press . Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC Mortimer , C . 1976 . Stress Time. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press . Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC The reviewer Jonathan Marks is a freelance teacher trainer, translator, and materials writer based in Poland. He is the author of English Pronunciation in Use Elementary (Cambridge University Press, 2007) and coauthor of The Book of Pronunciation (Delta Publishing, 2012). He is a founder member and former coordinator of the IATEFL Pronunciation Special Interest Group. Email: jonathanmarks@wp.pl © The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/pages/standard-publication-reuse-rights) © The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved.
TI - Pronunciation: from Cinderella to Achilles Heel … to Golden Age?
JF - ELT Journal
DO - 10.1093/elt/ccac031
DA - 2022-09-15
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VL - 76
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