This paper provides an overview of the main findings from a European-wide on-line survey of English pronunciation teaching practices. Both quantitative and qualitative data from seven countries (Finland, France, Germany, Macedonia, Poland, Spain and Switzerland) are presented, focusing on teachers' comments about:• their own pronunciation, • their training, • their learners' goals, skills, motivation and aspirations, • their preferences for certain varieties (and their perception of their students' preferences). The results of EPTiES reveal interesting phenomena across Europe, despite shortcomings in terms of construction and distribution. For example, most respondents are non-native speakers of English and the majority of them rate their own mastery of English pronunciation favourably. However, most feel they had little or no training in how to teach pronunciation, which begs the question of how teachers are coping with this key 1 Henderson and Frost are listed first because they did the final editing. Thereafter, authors are listed in alphabetical order of the country whose data they gathered and analysed. The order of the other authors thus reflects neither hierarchy nor significance of individual contributions, as this is a truly collaborative project and article.
This paper presents a subset of findings from a European-wide, on-line survey of English pronunciation teaching practices (EPTiES). Quantitative and qualitative data from seven countries
The relative prominence of syllables is essential to the segmentation of speech and therefore a crucial component of language comprehension, acquisition and learning. Incorrect placement and marking of prominence in English by non-native speakers can lead to problems in comprehensibility. Because the English and French phonological systems are so different, especially in the domain of stress, this can cause serious difficulties for many French speakers learning English. Indeed, some authors have posited the existence of 'stress deafness' in certain individuals. I suggest that French and English native speakers listen differently for stress, attributing different importance to the acoustic cues of F0, duration, amplitude and formant structure. This study focuses on the relative importance of these four cues with both English and French stimuli for English and French native speakers, and the results support the hypothesis.
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