ccclxiv TESOL QUARTERLY is an international professional organization for those concerned with the teaching of English as a second or foreign language and of standard English as a second dialect. TESOL's mission is to ensure excellence in English language teaching to speakers of other languages. TESOL encourages professionalism in language education; individual language rights; accessible, high quality education; collaboration in a global community; and interaction of research and reflective practice for educational improvement. Information about membership and other TESOL services is available from TESOL Central Office at the address below.TESOL Quarterly is published in March, June, September, and December. Contributions should be sent to the Editor or the appropriate Section Editors at the addresses listed in the Information for Contributors section. Publishers' representative is Paul Gibbs, Director of Publications. All material in TESOL Quarterly is copyrighted. Copying without the permission of TESOL, beyond the exemptions specified by law, is an infringement involving liability for damages.Reader Response You can respond to the ideas expressed in TESOL Quarterly by writing directly to editors and staff at tq@tesol.org. This will be a read-only service, but your opinions and ideas will be read regularly. You may comment on the topics raised in The Forum on an interactive bulletin board at http://communities.tesol.org/ϳtq. TESOL Home PageYou can find out more about TESOL services and publications by accessing the TESOL home page on the World Wide Web at http://www.tesol.org/.Advertising in all TESOL publications is arranged by Sherry Harding, TESOL Central Office, 700 South Washington Street, Suite 200, Alexandria, Virginia 22314 USA, Tel. 703-836-0774. Fax 703-836-7864. E-mail tesol@tesol.org. OFFICERS AND BOARD OF DIRECTORS 2005-2006 QUARTERLY Founded 1966Editor's Note ■ Pronunciation is perhaps the linguistic feature most open to judgment. As a surface structure phenomenon that is most noticeable, one's accent easily evokes people's biases. For the same reason, pronunciation has been the most prescriptively taught aspect of language instruction. Pedagogies for accent reduction have bordered on the pathological. The articles in this special topic issue bring a much needed research focus on social and communicative considerations in pronunciation that can lead pedagogy in constructive new directions. Relating pronunciation to issues of identity, group membership, interpersonal negotiation, and the plurality of World Englishes, they treat the topic with great intellectual rigor.John Levis's editorial introduction and the article by Tracey M. Derwing and Murray J. Munro in the opening section discuss the importance of developing a research-based approach to pronunciation and chart the paradigm shift taking place in the field. In the next section, John Field and David Deterding shift the focus from the speaker to the listener as they explore the ramifications of negotiating intelligibility. The reality of Wo...

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Both native and nonnative language teachers often find pronunciation a difficult skill to teach because of inadequate training or uncertainty about the effectiveness of instruction. But nonnative language teachers may also see themselves as inadequate models for pronunciation, leading to increased uncertainty about whether they should teach pronunciation (Golombek & Jordan, 2005). Although studies have regularly shown that instruction is effective in promoting pronunciation improvement (Saito, 2012), it is not known if improvement depends on the native language of the instructor, nor if learners improve differently depending on whether their teacher is native or nonnative. This study investigated the effect of teachers' first language on ratings of change in accentedness and comprehensibility. Learners in intact English classes were taught one class by a nonnative-and one by a native-English-speaking teacher. Each teacher taught the same pronunciation lessons over the course of 7 weeks. Results show that native listeners' ratings of the students' comprehensibility were similar for both teachers, despite many learners' stated preference for native teachers. The results offer encouragement to nonnative teachers in teaching pronunciation, suggesting that, like other language skills, instruction on pronunciation skills is more dependent on knowledgeable teaching practices than on native pronunciation of the teacher.

Pronunciation, long on the periphery of applied linguistics research and pedagogy, continues to grow in importance because of its central roles in speech recognition, speech perception, and speaker identity. Pronunciation-related issues such as comprehensibility, accent, and the mutual intelligibility of varieties of world Englishes are central to many questions in applied linguistics. This calls for a sophisticated understanding of how technological tools that have long been used to shed light on phonological categories can be applied to teaching. Research into computer-assisted pronunciation teaching (CAPT) suggests that both researchers and pronunciation teachers increasingly make use of technology to answer key questions, to ensure that claims are defensible, and to develop theories and practices that more closely match acoustic reality. This article reviews three key areas where computer technology and pronunciation intersect: (1) appropriate pedagogical goals and the measurement of improvement; (2) the ability of CAPT to give useful, automatic feedback; and (3) the use of technology in diagnosing pronunciation errors. This article concludes with recommendations for key technological competencies needed by any researcher or teacher who examines pronunciation-related issues.

This study examined whether differences in phonological awareness were related to differences in speech comprehensibility. Seventeen adults who learned English as a foreign language (EFL) in academic settings completed 14 tests of phonological awareness that measured their explicit knowledge of English phonological structures, and three tests of phonological short term memory. The same participants also read aloud a passage and narrated picture stories. These tasks were used by 12 native speakers of English to rate the EFL speakers' comprehensibility on a 9-point scale. There was a strong positive correlation between composite phonological awareness scores and rated comprehensibility and between composite phonological awareness scores and phonological short term memory. The correlation between rated comprehensibility and phonological short term memory was not significant. A simple linear regression analysis showed that approximately 19% of the variance in rated comprehensibility scores was accounted for by composite phonological awareness scores. The study offers support to the view that phonological awareness is related to differences in speech comprehensibility and the results suggest that form-focused instruction in phonology may contribute to the comprehensibility of EFL speakers.