There are two broad approaches to the research and teaching of second-language (L2) pronunciation—‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’—which roughly align with structural and communicative approaches to language teaching. A bottom-up approach, explicitly focusing on de-contextualised linguistic forms, is structuralist and predominated in the second half of the 20th century; a top-down approach to L2 pronunciation takes a more communicative orientation, defining the instructional goal not as acquiring a native-speaker accent, but rather as ‘intelligibility.’ In consideration of this pronunciation goal (i.e. intelligibility) and recent L2 acquisition theoretical frameworks emphasising the role of social and contextual factors in shaping interlanguage (IL) systems, we argue that a top-down approach is paramount to L2 pronunciation instruction. Drawing on variationist research on IL phonology and a brief recount of International Teaching Assistant pronunciation course programs in the US, we present the Mirroring Project as an effective top-down pedagogical approach for L2 pronunciation instruction.

The Mirroring Project (Lindgren et al., 2003; Meyers, 2013, 2014) is a pedagogical option helping those who speak in a second language to improve their intelligibility in a holistic, context-sensitive way. Longitudinal, video-recorded evidence shows how the suprasegmental phonology of one adult English L2 learner, an international teaching assistant in a U.S. university, changes over time, as she “mirrors” the speech of an English speaker she herself has selected as a model. Importantly, it is the learner’s suprasegmentals and nonverbal communication movements which were the focus of instruction, and which noticeably improved due to the Mirroring Project. These findings can be accounted for using the Douglas Fir Group’s (2016) transdisciplinary framework, and Baktin’s constructs of double voicing and semantic language play (Cook, 2000; Tarone, 2000; Broner & Tarone, 2001).

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As a new faculty member, I was midway through my first semester when I realized three things: 1) most first-year students and some upper-level students were not thinking critically about the subject matter; 2) they did not know what critical thinking was; and 3) I needed to slow the pace, even eliminate discussion topics, in order to familiarize students with the process and provide the time necessary to apply critical thinking skills. Based on my initial experiences, I developed a list of strategies I'm now implementing.Define Critical Thinking to Students -Like most professors, I assumed that students knew how to think beyond rote memory. After students expressed their confusion and uncertainty, I decided to begin a discussion of critical thinking with Bloom and Green's clear definition. "Critical thinking generally embraces all forms of higher-level thinking that are more complex or deeper than mere acquisition of knowledge and factual recall." I have also developed a handout that lists several higher-level, critical thinking skills.