Teaching English pronunciation in a multilingual world
Dr Jim Chan, School of Education, and Margaret Lo share their view on teaching English pronunciation in a multilingual world.
For many English language teachers in schools, teaching pronunciation is a complex, dilemma-filled task. For one thing, in many school contexts where English has high importance in an exam system but not in everyday social life, pronunciation may not be high in teachers’ priorities.
While the vast majority of English language teachers in schools around the world speak English as a second language, so-called ‘native’ pronunciation of standard North American and British English, continue to be upheld as the ‘correct’ way to speak, despite the reality of multilingualism across the world.
This ‘native speaker’ dominance persists through textbooks, examinations, published listening materials, as well as through deeply-rooted societal ideology that equates ‘nativeness’ with prestige.
Crucially, this focus undermines the fact that L2 speakers are now the legitimate majority of English users worldwide, for whom retaining a local accent is often a vital expression of cultural identity.
This pattern is seen globally and in the Asian region, where a discrepancy between the diverse ways English is used in international communication and the ‘native’ ideals found in education keeps teachers in doubt about their own pronunciation and how best to teach it in the classroom.
Fundamentally, this focus on ‘nativeness’ often overlooks the most essential need for students today: the ability to achieve effective communication and mutual intelligibility in an increasingly interconnected, international context.
What matters in pronunciation teaching?
Taking a multilingual perspective, recent developments in pronunciation teaching and research have focused on what makes speech effective and intelligible in social interactions between speakers of different linguistic backgrounds.
What are the specific phonological features of the local variety of English that matter for mutual understanding in multilingual contexts? Rather than pursuing a ‘native-speaker’ or any ‘fixed’ pronunciation norm, how can our pronunciation be fine-tuned to ensure it is understood in international communication?
In doing so, how can we account for the role of language attitudes and identities—allowing speakers to retain their cultural identity while achieving effective communication—within the complex and changing sociocultural, historical and educational contexts in which English is taught?
More importantly, how can this approach be integrated into current education policy and practice to ensure they are sustainable and feasible?
These are the questions examined in this book, using Hong Kong English as a case study.
A staged investigation into pronunciation intelligibility
In our book, we propose to readers a staged investigation into the pronunciation features of one’s variety of English to determine which features are most likely to contribute to intelligibility in international communication contexts.
This process, we suggest, starts with critically unpacking language use, attitudes and identities in their global and local sociolinguistic context, investigating the local English variety and variations within the speech community, and examining current English language teaching and learning, including curricula, commercial textbooks, classroom pronunciation teaching, assessment and teachers’ and students’ perceptions.
By situating the language within a specific sociocultural setting, this multifaceted approach provides the basis for a systematic analysis of the English language variety and its pronunciation features, enabling us to identify the priorities for teaching pronunciation based on prominence and intelligibility.
Therefore, pronunciation teaching in the curriculum and classroom practice can be fine-tuned to ensure intelligibility in the local sociolinguistic and educational context.
Pronunciation teaching for intelligibility
The notion of ‘intelligibility’, therefore, means that focusing exclusively on a ‘native speaker’ model is no longer useful for multilingual social interaction. Instead, teachers can prioritise features that are important for intelligibility in the sociolinguistic contexts important to their students.
This is not a straightforward process, given the diversity of needs and desires amongst any class of students.
This approach recognises the value of qualified bilingual/multilingual teachers, who serve as both role models and linguistic models for their learners.
The exploratory tasks in our book support teachers in critically examining the English variety (or varieties) and the sociocultural and educational context in which they are used. In terms of teaching pronunciation in the classroom, we take the view that students come to the classroom with existing knowledge and skills.
Teaching pronunciation is thus a responsive process involving exposure to a range of different English varieties, listening to students’ speech, making principled decisions on priorities, and teaching in the service of improving students’ intelligibility in the variety of English they use.
We hope teachers and teacher educators find the ‘intelligibility principle’ resonates with the multilingual lives of English language learners in schools around the world.
It is also our goal that researchers draw on this staged developmental process to inform and expand future inquiry into contextualised pronunciation research and practice.
Bio
Jim Y.H. Chan is a Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Leeds, where he also serves as a teacher educator. Before moving to the UK, he was an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong. He began his career as a secondary school teacher of Chemistry and English. His research interests include World Englishes (WE), English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), Teaching English as an International Language (EIL), language use, attitudes and identities, bilingual/multilingual education, and Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL). His recent work has appeared in leading journals such as TESOL Quarterly, Language Teaching Research, World Englishes, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, Language and Education, System, Language Assessment Quarterly, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, Asian Englishes, RELC Journal, and The Journal of Asia TEFL.
Margaret M. Lo is an independent scholar and teacher educator in English language education. Previously, she was an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong, where she led undergraduate and post-graduate teacher education programmes, and taught courses on phonology for English teachers, sociocultural and critical perspectives on English language education, and critical social research methods. Her research explores teacher education for social justice and inclusion, youth mentoring as service-learning, and critical literacy and asset-based pedagogies in the English language curriculum in Hong Kong schools.
