This paper compares the treatment of English pronunciation in school textbooks from France and Poland, in order to see what resources teachers have at their disposal. It is limited to textbooks used at the secondary level of each education system. Recent research has shown that European teachers do not find teaching English pronunciation easy and that many are unsatisfied with their training in relation to teaching pronunciation (Bradford & Kenworthy 1991; Burgess and Spencer 2000; Henderson et al. 2012; Frost and Henderson, 2013; Iivonen, 2005). Textbooks are a widespread resource with the potential to alleviate a lack of extensive pedagogical training. The first part of this paper analyses pronunciation exercises in a representative sample of textbooks from each country. Pronunciation exercises were classified based on the degree to which they mobilize communicative abilities, according to the five categories of a Communicative Framework for teaching pronunciation (Celce-Murcia et al., 2010, p45): Description & analysis, Listening discrimination, Controlled practice, Guided practice, Communicative practice. The first category involves little risk-taking by the learner, usually focusses on form and allows little freedom. At the other end of the spectrum, communicative practice involves a focus on meaning and interaction, with the concomitant greater freedom to make mistakes. The exercises were then analysed to see which segmental and/or prosodic features they favoured and to what extent.

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The studies devoted to the so-called good language learners that emerged in the 1970s (Rubin 1975) reveal that efficient learners fall back on an abundant and highly individualised array of techniques and strategic behaviours related to and employed while learning. The well-known taxonomies by Oxford (1990) and O’Malley and Chamot (1990) gave rise to analyses and investigations in the field of learner autonomy and self-development, also in pronunciation learning/teaching. As has been corroborated by empirical studies (Oxford 2001a; Oxford 2001b; Chamot, 2004) strategy training contributes to the increase in overall proficiency as well as to a number of invaluable benefits such as enhanced motivation, greater self-efficacy, anxiety reduction and more positive attitudes. Although studies dedicated to the relationship between learning strategies and pronunciation are still in their infancy, there are a number of investigations that set the directions for further research and development (Peterson 2000; Pawlak 2008; Pawlak and Oxford 2018). The paper presents results of a pilot study conducted in a secondary school that aimed at observing how learners develop pronunciation strategies as a result of regular pronunciation input and feedback from the teacher. It addresses a tentative assumption that explicit pronunciation training may contribute to the enhanced strategy use and consequently to better oral performance. Detecting and naming the strategies employed by the learners as well as selecting the most effective ones for more explicit application aided and boosted the learners’ awareness and confidence, which was confirmed by data obtained from questionnaires and from participant observation.

When learners misplace the stress in a word, they distort the rhythm, which may render it unrecognizable to the listener. Yet, despite its significance for intelligibility, word stress is rarely taught in English as a foreign language (EFL) courses. This study investigated an alternative to classroom instruction of lexical stress: autonomous practice outside of class. Participants were six Polish EFL high-school students taking a language course at a school in Poland. To improve their prediction and production of English word stress, the students learned and practiced orthographic word-stress rules using practice worksheets and YouGlish, a YouTube dictionary, out of class for four weeks. Data were gathered from read-aloud pre-and post-tests assessing students' ability to predict and produce the stress of English polysyllabic words; a background questionnaire; the teacher's observation field notes; and pronunciation activity trackers eliciting students' behaviours, practice choices, time spent practicing, and opinions about the resources used. The results provided support for the efficacy of the materials in supporting autonomous pronunciation learning for successful and highly motivated EFL students.

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