John Hodgetts - Pronunciation Instruction in English for Academic Purposes: An Investigation of Attitudes, Beliefs and Practices

The series brings together volumes dealing with different aspects of learning and teaching second and foreign languages. The titles included are both monographs and edited collections focusing on a variety of topics ranging from the processes underlying second language acquisition, through various aspects of language learning in instructed and non-instructed settings, to different facets of the teaching process, including syllabus choice, materials design, classroom practices and evaluation. The publications reflect state-of-the-art developments in those areas, they adopt a wide range of theoretical perspectives and follow diverse research paradigms. The intended audience are all those who are interested in naturalistic and classroom second language acquisition, including researchers, methodologists, curriculum and materials designers, teachers and undergraduate and graduate students undertaking empirical investigations of how second languages are learnt and taught.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10129

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG

The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

The process of devising and implementing the research project upon which this book is based, although challenging, was a rewarding and enjoyable experience. I would like to thank all of those involved in the research: the teachers, the course leader, the learners, and the course mentor. I would particularly like to express my gratitude to the three teacher participants who agreed to be observed and took part in interviews on such a demanding course. I truly appreciate the involvement and participation of all those concerned at University A.

I would also like to thank Prof. Ewa Waniek-Klimczak for her guidance and support as a supervisor during the doctoral research that forms the basis of this book. Both her encouragement and knowledge of the subject area were invaluable and enabled me to defend my thesis in a timely manner.

I would like to express my gratitude to the two reviewers of the original Ph.D. thesis: Profs. Andrzej Porzuczek and Romuald Gozdawa-Gobiowski. Their advice and comments were extremely helpful in assisting the realization of this book.

Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends for their steadfast support, both during the research process itself and also during the writing of this book.

Pronunciation instruction has long been an area that I have found fascinating both as a practitioner and researcher. Reflections on my own experiences as a learner of foreign languages, both in childhood and as an adult, made me aware of the peculiar, and some would argue, almost unique nature of pronunciation when compared to other areas of language study. Although learners may react negatively when they discover that they have produced inaccurate language in writing, pronunciation has an intensely personal quality that is absent in writing. Losing face by pronouncing something incorrectly in an L2 can have a detrimental effect on learner motivation, more so than errors in other aspects of language learning. Of course, this is culture bound too, so in some learning contexts other errors (for example, grammatical errors) may also induce a sense of failure or discouragement in learners. Nevertheless, the act of speaking and articulating words, phrases, and sentences has a link with the self that other aspects of language learning do not seem to have (Arnold, ). However, the consequences of not providing pronunciation instruction and guidance may well mean that learners could complete their language learning being able to perform the four skills, but not always being understood when speaking: a highly undesirable outcome. The challenge is therefore to provide instruction that is appropriate for the particular group of learners. This can depend on a range of factors, including the age of the learners and the motivation for learning a particular language.

My experiences as a practitioner have spanned over twenty years (since 1996) and have been diverse in terms of the type of pronunciation instruction that was demanded from me (if any). In certain teaching contexts, there was a lack of guidance in terms of what appropriate instruction could entail. I recall several teacher observations where the inclusion of pronunciation instruction seemed important for the teacher trainer, but the type of instruction seemed immaterial, as long as there were elements of pronunciation instruction present. Since 2012, I have been an instructor on a university summer pre-sessional access course in EAP for adult learners at a university in the North of England (henceforth referred to as University A) which does, to a limited extent, have some focus on pronunciation instruction. In the summer of 2018, after receiving consent from the course leader and participants at University A, I began the practical stage of my mixed methods research into the provision of pronunciation instruction on the ten-week summer pre-sessional course (Hodgetts, ).