1. THE IMPORTANCE OF PRONUNCIATION TEACHING
By: Mrs.Badache Lynda
University of Batna
May 2013

2. First impressions
Pronunciation is definitely the biggest thing that people notice when
you are speaking English.You can live without advanced  vocabulary, you can use simple words to say what you want to say. You can use ‘simple’grammar.But there is no such thing as "simple pronunciation ». If the pronunciation is poor , neither Grammar nor vocabulary would help you !
Here is an anecdote about this:
After coming back from a vacation in the USA, a friend of mine
said:"Whenever I spoke to a person in America, they kept asking
me What? What? I would repeat my sentence again and again.
Finally they would say Ah-ha! and then say my sentence, using exactly my words! It was very humiliating. I knew my words
and grammar were good, but nobody would understand me, just because of my Pronunciation.

3. What to take into account when....
Content
Teaching
Pronunciation
Learners
Tasks
Goals

4. WHEN TO ACQUIRE ?
Should pronunciation be taught and acquired early? Or is it something we can worry about later?

5. In the absence of a good model and without guidance, the learner will perceive, produce and internalize sounds of the target language based on the native language sounds.
For this reason, if not given emphasis at the very beginning, pronunciation will never be acquired well.

6. Since pronunciation habits are formed early, it seems obvious that it is at that point that the development of a good pronunciation should be emphasized.
When accuracy is neglected, the result will be fossilized pronunciation errors.

7. HOW TO ACQUIRE?
Naturally: as a result of exposure and interaction in the environment of the target language and its culture.
By teaching: providing a good pronunciation model (instructors with native-like pronunciation, recordings, etc.), explaining differences, using phonetic symbols to make pronunciation visible, limited peer interaction, effective error correction, exercising accurate pronunciation.

8. SPELLING INTERFERENCE
The written language is a significant source of input to EFL students.
The higher the spelling inconsistency is, the more negative the influence on pronunciation will be. The English spelling does not serve as a guide to pronunciation. On the contrary, it can often be misleading. For instance:

9. “s” has got five different ways of pronunciation:
SPELLING VS. PRONUNCIATION
“s” has got five different ways of pronunciation:
/s/ as in basic, past, say
/z/ as in because, rose
/ᶘ/ as in sugar, sure
/ᶚ/ as in casual, usually, television
/mute/ as in aisle, island

10. bough / baʊ / cough / kɒf / dough / dəʊ/ rough / rʌf /
The frustration of the EFL learner never ends:
bough / baʊ /
cough / kɒf /
dough / dəʊ/
rough / rʌf /
through / θruː /
hiccough /ˈhɪkʌp /

11. “Comfortable” Intelligibility
Goals
Foreign Speaker
Native listener
interaction
Convey message
“Positive face”
Expectations on the listener
Understand message
Tolerance
Expectations on the speaker
‘threshold level’
acceptability
accessibility
“Comfortable” Intelligibility

12. 1. Features of pronunciation 2. Criteria for selection
Content
1. Features of pronunciation
Segmental
Suprasegmental
rhythm
intonation
sounds
variations
connected
speech
stress
Accent
2. Criteria for selection
teachability  intelligibility  integration
 differences with L2  perception - production
 institutional requirements  time availability

13. Factors affecting pronunciation learning
Learners
Factors affecting pronunciation learning
Biological
Psycho-sociological
Background
Age
Closeness to L1 acquisition
Phonetic coding ability
Motivation
Attitude
View of the foreign country
prior instruction
opportunities for practice outside the classroom
amount of exposure

14. Presentation –Practice – Remedial work
Tasks
different
learning styles
contextualised
Requirements
integrated within
the language class
communicative
learner-centred
Sequence
Presentation –Practice – Remedial work
Identification
of feature:
awareness raising
Description
and analysis
Listening
discrimination
Controlled and
Guided practice
Communicative
Tasks

15. What makes Pronunciation difficult to teach?
The lack of adequate language teacher training in pronunciation, with the result that teachers may lack knowledge and confidence.
Teachers are often left without clear guidelines and are confronted with contradictory purposes and practices for pronunciation instruction ,no systematic way of deciding what, when and how to teach it (Derwing & Foote,2011).
A common problem is deciding whether to focus on segmentals or on suprasegmentals, and to what extent?
A related challenge is how to address production and perception.

16. Conclusion It all brings us to the overall conclusions that:
Pronunciation is more important than it seems to be and has always been acknowledged that it is a fundamental part of one’s oral ability in the target language.
The students need intensive contact with good pronunciation models in the beginning of the learning process.
The goal of teaching pronunciation is to enable students to become “not perfect pronouncers of English but intelligible , communicative, confident users of spoken English for whatever purposes they need.

17. Thank you for your attention !