The paper addresses a very important aspect of Polish-accented English, namely the issue of frequent phonetic errors made by Polish learners which do not result from their inability to produce foreign sounds correctly, but which stem from various interference factors (e.g foreign pronounced as [fo'rejn]). Following Szpyra-Kozłowska's (in press a) claims that such errors hinder successful communication far more than other segmental and suprasegmental inaccuracies and should thus be treated as a top pedagogical priority, what is suggested is a shift in phonetic instruction from the focus on the production of sounds and prosodies to the focus on the pronunciation of problematic words. Our major goal is to demonstrate how this proposal can be implemented in the language classroom.The authors present a report on the experiment in which a group of 25 Polish secondary school pupils has undergone a special training in the pronunciation of 50 commonly mispronounced words with the use of special, teacher-designed materials. The effectiveness of the employed procedure as well as the pupils' reactions to it are examined and pedagogical conclusions are drawn.
Key words:English pronunciation/phonetics, phonetically difficult words, phonetic priorities, teaching English pronunciation
Introductory remarksSzpyra-Kozłowska (in press a and b) argues that the traditional focus of pronunciation instruction on segments and prosodies fails to address the issue of phonetically deviant words, known as local errors, which abound in foreign-accented English.For instance, Polish learners of English frequently mispronounce the name Disney as [d'isnej], even though the form [dizni] does not contain any particularly difficult sounds 1 and sound combinations. Clearly, the Polish English version is spelling-based and follows Polish spelling-to-pronunciation rules according to which the sequence is 1 It should be added that all consonants in this word in Polish have the dental rather than the alveolar place of articulation.
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