Native-speaker and English as a lingua franca pronunciation norms: English majors’ views

Abstract

Within the communicative approach to English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching, the aims of instruction are primarily to enable learners to communicate; hence, functional and communicative intelligibility has become the goal of pronunciation training. On the other hand, contemporary approaches to EFL teaching leave sufficient room for accommodating the individual learner and contextual factors which largely influence the choice of the target pronunciation models. Moreover, in a globalized world, where English has become a contemporary lingua franca for intercultural communication, the pronunciation norms of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) appear to meet the needs and expectations of learners of English in international settings, coexisting with or replacing nativespeaker pronunciation models as the target of instruction. The ELF approach and the Lingua Franca Core elaborated by Jenkins (2000Jenkins ( , 2002 have aroused controversy among both researchers and EFL teachers. The paper presents the findings of a questionnaire study involving 234 Polish students, English majors, which aimed to determine their preferences and opinions concerning nativespeaker and ELF norms as pronunciation instruction targets. The findings revealed a strong preference for native-like pronunciation models in the subjects' own language development and a less strong preference for such models in pronunciation teaching at all levels of proficiency. Moreover, the results pointed to the significant role played by the intensity of pronunciation training and the level of awareness of native-speaker pronunciation models in shaping the subjects' attitudes toward native-like and ELF pronunciation norms.

Peer Assessment in L2 Pronunciation Instruction in Russia: Students’ Attitude Research

“…Analyzing students' opinions is a widespread type of research in foreign institutions (Derwing, 2010;Wach, 2011;Coskun, 2011;Chien, 2014) which, unfortunately, has not proved to be as popular in Russia yet. Still, within the learner-oriented approach to English teaching, which has been widespread in Russia since the end of the twentieth century, students were surveyed in order to answer the following research questions:…”

Pronunciation Teaching: Past and Present

“…Even though communicative language teaching failed to spare proper attention to pronunciation in its initial stages of development as was discussed earlier, intelligible pronunciation was later identified as a vital constituent of communicative competence which lodges at the very heart of CLT. Communicative language teaching changed the instructional focus from the traditional, bottom-up approaches prioritizing accuracy and practicing isolated sounds to a more top-down approach concentrated on fluency and practicing suprasegmental features (Wach, 2012).…”

“…Likewise, Sobkowiak (2005) stated that all the sounds of English are indispensable for NNS communication and we cannot make the language artificial and unnatural by limiting the sound system to "core" elements. Proponents of LFC, however, emphasized its concern for intelligibility, its value for international communication, and its learnability (Wach, 2012). Matsumoto (2011), for example, described the advantages of LFC in promoting negotiation among learners and providing a basis for an effective pronunciation syllabus.…”

“…In the contemporary field of language teaching, most teachers acknowledge that having a foreign accent is quite natural for EFL learners, and that pronunciation instruction should aim for intelligibility and comprehensibility. Nonetheless, there are still strong preferences among teachers and learners alike for native-like pronunciation models and little acknowledgment for non-native models in pronunciation teaching (He & Zhang, 2010;Kopperoinen, 2011;Wach, 2012). Also, textbooks and resources for teaching pronunciation continue to massively represent minority prestigious accents such as the British Received Pronunciation or General American (Deterding, 2005;Levis, 2005).…”

English Pronunciation Standard Preferences among Students of Polish Universities — Self-reports

“…There are many studies exploring issues similar to those investigated in this paper, but they most frequently examine participants who are 'advanced' users of English, which really means students of language departments (e.g Pawlak, Mystkowska-Wiertelak & Bielak 2015). or even English majors (e.g Waniek-Klimczak, Rojczyk & Porzuczek 2015;Wach 2011)…”