Showing papers by "Nanyang Technological University published in 1973"

Problems in Teaching Pronunciation

Abstract: are particularly acute in the case of tertiary-level students who may have studied English as a second language for as many as ten years but whose pronunciation of the language is far from what teachers would describe as ’satisfactory’. In the absence of clearly defined objectives, teachers try to solve this problem in various ways. But unfortunately, as students seem to make innumerable mistakes, and as the curriculum is often crowded out with equally pressing demands for more reading and writing, the actual teaching of pronunciation may be confined to a short two-week stint at the beginning of each term or 5 minutes at the beginning of each’lesson. Under such circumstances, the teacher has to be very selective as to what he teaches. Quite naturally, many choose to teach only such very simple distinctions as ’minimal pairs’ in the hope that if the student can hear and make these minimal sound distinctions, he is on the road to successful pronunciation. Other teachers, less confident about ’removing mistakes in pronunciation’ allow students to talk freely in the hope that so long as a student can produce a string of utterances, satisfactorily enunciated or otherwise, fluency has been achieved. -