Full text
Many thanks go to Antoine Consigny and Stéphane Kostantzer for their support and precious help with this volume.
1To start the third decade of the 21st century—massively marked by the coronavirus pandemic—with renewed motivation and in order to reinforce the efforts to recognize the importance of pronunciation in the acquisition and teaching of proficient speaking skills, our intention in this volume has been to focus on innovative and revised pedagogical approaches to the pronunciation of English as a second language. Ranam 55, entitled Pronunciation matters: Current perspectives on teaching and learning L2 phonology, thus addresses an array of contemporary issues and work in-progress on learning and teaching different aspects of English phonetics and phonology.
2A series of pilot studies opens the volume in the fields of articulatory phonetics, prosody, sociophonetics, and modern media-based pedagogy, namely serious games and Twitter. Following these examples of innovative approaches, the volume promotes the diversity of methods not just along the qualitative-quantitative dimensions but also on the less trodden paths of prolonged pedagogical projects and the validation of previously established conclusions. Two papers present a longitudinal investigation of the interphonological system of young learners (aged 7 to 10) and a replication of an oral comprehension study of regional variation in university language instruction, respectively. Finally, the last three articles offer insights on a more global plane by focusing, in turn, on listener-centred approaches pertinent in an array of teaching and training situations, on the evolving teaching practices of US-based pre-service teachers, and on the phonology section of the English teacher recruitment examination in France. The collection, as a result, constitutes a commendable pool of ideas and tested practices in the learning and teaching of phonology bringing together authors from different parts of France, Sweden and the United States.
3The first contribution “Teaching pronunciation with direct visual articulatory feedback: Pedagogical considerations for the use of ultrasound in the classroom” by Barbara Kühnert and Claire Pillot-Loiseau provides insight from an exploratory pilot study aiming at the evaluation of direct visual articulatory feedback utilised in a regular university classroom setting where learners are accompanied by a series of short-time training periods only. Focusing on two pairs of English monophthongs, findings show learner progress in the differentiation between the two high front vowels for some participants, but only a slight effect for an improved distinction between the two open non-back vowels.
4Dan Frost’s paper “Doing pronunciation online: An embodied and cognitive approach, which puts prosody first” sets out to test the efficacy of online pronunciation learning in the framework of the author’s university course. In an articulatory approach to learning pronunciation, the training incorporates short videos and interactive activities with a special focus on prosody. The paper examines the extent to which students make progress using an online learning path specifically targeting pronunciation and listening skills.
5The article “Teaching English sociophonetics through a tutored project” by Thomas Jauriberry also involves the assessment of a learning experience, but this time in a face-to-face teaching context, that builds heavily on student autonomy for the successful fulfilment of the learning objectives. The author highlights the advantages of approaching sociophonetics differently than in a regular university lecture setting and cogently argues for the teaching of diverse, real-life pronunciation models (similarly to many other authors in the collection).
6The fourth paper in the series of pilot studies by Mahdi Amazouz and Franck Zumstein, entitled “Using learner corpora in serious game design for English phonology and pronunciation teaching”, explores the possibilities of game-based learning in the teaching of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Their analysis of phonemic transcriptions highlights the significance of prosody teaching (echoing Frost’s approach in the present volume) as the most recurrent mistakes in their study involve the reduced sound /ə/. Very similarly to the context of Jauriberry’s tutored project (present volume), students are seen as actors of their learning as authors discuss the importance of student engagement, autonomy and efficiency in the acquisition of L2 phonology.
7Amanda Dalola examines the relevance of using Twitter in L2 phonology in her paper entitled “Une image vaut mille prononciations: Using Twitter to support the acquisition of hard-to-pronounce words in L2 French”. Her results reveal that learners improve their pronunciation of words presented with pictures in Twitter feeds much more than when the words are accompanied by a video link, and highlight the different behaviour of words with silent non-final consonants. This contribution stands out from the rest of the volume as it focuses on the acquisition of French L2 phonology but the discussion is extremely useful since not only does it address one of the current popular media and its potential in pronunciation teaching in general, but it also points out that the specific choice of the teaching prop has an impact on the global effectiveness of the method.
8The topical paper “Assessing spoken English performance and self-efficacy beliefs in the classroom: Some considerations on the value of an interdisciplinary embodied methodology for French learners of English” by Julie Rouaud, Nathalie Huet and Anne Przewozny-Desriaux, investigates how learner performance and commitment are influenced by their self-efficacy beliefs and the perceived usefulness of the tasks. According to their findings from a longitudinal educational project, the main benefit of the embodied phonological method is that it maintains the initial self-efficacy beliefs for both general English competences and English pronunciation. The authors’ analysis provides a detailed description of the interphonological system of the learner groups as well as the educational modules of the project.
9Kizzi Edensor-Costille, in her article entitled “The impact of day-to-day use of multimedia by L2 learners of English on the comprehension of regional varieties”, questions the potential impact of the Internet and the easily accessible multimedia on the comprehension of regional accents of English by non-natives via the replication of her previous study carried out in 2009. Her results suggest that, among the varieties under study, the Cardiff accent is the most intelligible in 2019 while some accents remain difficult to understand.
10The thought-provoking paper “English phonology in a globalized world: Challenging native speakerism through listener training in universities in Sweden and the US” by Hyeseung Jeong, Stephanie Lindemann and Julia Forsberg deals with the effective replacement of the standard language ideology of more traditional English teaching in the two different teaching contexts of Sweden and the Unites States. Following the description of a phonetically oriented study in Sweden and the insights gained from learner difficulties and listener training in the US, the paper reflects on how the focus may efficiently be shifted from the speaker to the listener in the teaching of L2 phonology.
11Kochem and Levis’s “Evolving teaching practices of pre-service language teachers in L2 pronunciation: A case study” constitutes a remarkable contribution to our understanding of how novice teachers in the United States provide pronunciation instruction after receiving training. The authors affirm the need for more specialized training in L2 pronunciation pedagogy in teacher preparation curricula based on the insights from a thorough analysis of diagnostic assessments, oral reports, written reflections, and tutoring observations building on a graduate course on L2 phonology. As a welcome addendum to their multiple case study, the authors also briefly present the evolution of pronunciation teaching in general.
12The volume ends with “English pronunciation and the spelling-sound code: What priorities for teachers of EFL?” by Susan Moore Mauroux. She reflects on the extent to which the phonology papers in the secondary teacher recruitment examination in France cover the effective needs of pupils in the practical context of the classroom. Her analysis provides an overview over a span of twenty years of the exam questions and their brief analysis in the official report each year, and focuses especially on the spelling-sound relationship in English. Through her comparison against a hierarchy of learner difficulties, the author argues that effective teaching of how the English spelling-sound code works leads to progress in both production and comprehension.
Table 1: Answers to the survey questions Teaching good communication skills has been a priority for your English teachers and Teaching good pronunciation skills has been a priority for your English teachers (expressed in percentage throughout the table).
|
Absolutely |
Somewhat |
Slightly |
Not at all |
Total |
Response rate |
Learning good communication skills in English has been a priority for you. |
41 |
49 |
8 |
2 |
100 |
71 |
- in primary school |
20 |
17 |
30 |
33 |
100 |
48 |
- in collège (lower secondary school) |
16 |
34 |
35 |
15 |
100 |
68 |
- in lycée (higher secondary school) |
24 |
48 |
20 |
8 |
100 |
67 |
- at university |
45 |
36 |
13 |
5 |
100 |
61 |
Learning good pronunciation skills in English has been a priority for you. |
54 |
38 |
6 |
2 |
100 |
84 |
- in primary school |
15 |
13 |
35 |
37 |
100 |
46 |
- in collège (lower secondary school) |
10 |
36 |
40 |
13 |
100 |
77 |
- in lycée (higher secondary school) |
25 |
45 |
21 |
8 |
100 |
99 |
- at university |
52 |
31 |
15 |
1 |
100 |
67 |
- 1 I would like to thank again the 126 participants who took part in the survey last year; I read pas (...)
13A brief survey1 conducted among English majors at the University of Strasbourg enrolled in their second year shows that despite the majority of students considering good communication and pronunciation skills in English essential, this priority had been quite variably matched by an equal primacy accorded by their schoolteachers, at least in their opinion. As summed up in Table 1 above, there seems to be a gradual shift (perceived by the students) from primary school towards higher education: as learners make progress in general linguistic competences, more and more priority is given to speaking skills and pronunciation. Fitting this context, the various contributions to the present issue of Ranam are all excellently positioned in the present-day landscape of phonology teaching and provide welcome succour to the continuing necessity of exchange between actual practices and theoretical principles in phonological research.
Notes
1 I would like to thank again the 126 participants who took part in the survey last year; I read passionate and detailed responses and was happy to see students’ clear-sighted common sense and their ability to compare their experiences in learning different languages at different levels.
Top of pageReferences
Bibliographical reference
Monika Pukli, “Preface”, Recherches anglaises et nord-américaines, 55 | 2022, 5-8.
Electronic reference
Monika Pukli, “Preface”, Recherches anglaises et nord-américaines [Online], 55 | 2022, Online since 01 February 2024, connection on 22 June 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ranam/362; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/ranam.362
Top of pageCopyright
The text only may be used under licence CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) are “All rights reserved”, unless otherwise stated.
Top of page