Recent research has shown that explicit pronunciation teaching is effective in improving learners' speech comprehensibility, and many studies have presented effective ways to teach pronunciation (Thomson & Derwing, 2014). However, it is still not yet known in many EFL (English as a foreign language) settings whether this finding has any effect on the current beliefs and practices of English language teachers. The current study examines what EFL teachers in a Saudi EFL context believe about teaching pronunciation, how they teach pronunciation, and what pronunciation training they have. Fifty-five English language teachers at the English Language Center at Taif University in Saudi Arabia were asked to complete an online survey regarding pronunciation teaching. Their responses were subjected to quantitative descriptive analysis. The results revealed that the teachers highly valued pronunciation teaching, and most of them considered it as important as teaching other language skills. In addition, most of the teachers reported incorporating pronunciation teaching into their English classes. The unavailability of pronunciation materials and technological recourses forced the teachers to employ traditional strategies to teaching pronunciation. The findings also showed a lack of specific pronunciation training available to the teachers, though the teachers desired to have more training opportunities.

This paper reports on a study that attempted to examine the effect of explicit pronunciation instruction of some English segments (individual sounds) on the degree of perceived foreign accent in EFL Arab learners’ speech. Nine Arab learners of English in an EFL (English as a foreign language) setting were assigned to two groups, experimental and control. Five utterances loaded with the taught segments were collected from both groups before and after instruction. While the experimental group received instruction on these segments, the control group did not. 13 native English listeners were recruited to rate all the elicited sentences for the degree of perceived foreign accent. The results did not show any effect of explicit pronunciation instruction on the degree of perceived foreign accent, as there were no differences between the ratings before and after the instruction.

Communication skills are extremely important for the tourism industry; they form an integral part of most tourism activities. Using English, as the international lingua franca, is an essential part of these skills, especially for international tourism. Saudi Vision 2030 places a high importance on international tourism as a driving force for economic growth. Since the inception of the Saudi Vision 2030, the tourism industry in Saudi Arabia, along with its workforce, has been growing substantially. Therefore, designing English language teaching materials for the tourism industry workforce in Saudi Arabia is a necessity. The current study firstly aimed to analyze the English language communicative needs of the Saudi tourism workforce, and then propose an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) model for teaching English based on their needs. A nation-wide survey was designed and distributed to sixty-two male and fifteen female workers serving in the Saudi tourism industry to determine their English language communicative needs. Listening and speaking were found to be highly important to their profession, in particular understanding instructions and requirements and providing details about touristic attractions. Reading and vocabulary were found more important than writing and grammatical accuracy. The study concludes with a proposal of an ESP teaching model to meet the English language communicative needs of the tourism workforce in Saudi Arabia.

Being able to speak or communicate orally is an ultimate goal for most English language learners. Thus, teaching speaking is a main component of the curriculum in most communicative-based English language classrooms. However, teachers struggle to teach speaking in English language classrooms. Two main reasons contribute to this struggle: insufficient time for speaking practice in language classrooms and students’ unwillingness to communicate due to anxiety. Asynchronous Computer-Mediated Communication (ACMC) may have the potential to provide a solution to this difficulty. A widely accessible mobile application that can provide an easily implemented ACMC tool is WhatsApp. The current case study explored the potential use of WhatsApp for teaching English speaking in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context. 15 Saudi EFL learners of English were recruited to participate in the present study. A mixed-method approach comprising pre and post-tests, closed-ended questionnaire, and semi-structured interviews were used to collect the data for the current study. The findings showed that using WhatsApp can have the potential for improving EFL learners’ speaking performance, increasing their motivation and attitude towards speaking, and decreasing their anxiety and fear of making mistakes when speaking. WhatsApp can provide an effective platform for teaching speaking in an EFL setting where there is a scarcity of time available for oral communication.

Most previous studies, that have examined the effect of explicit pronunciation instruction on foreign language speech, have focused on the short term effect of explicit pronunciation instruction, usually measured immediately after instruction. For this reason, it is not yet clear whether the attested benefit from pronunciation instruction can be sustained for a long time after instruction. The current study attempted to explore the long term effect of phonetic instruction on the production of the English bilabial voiceless stop /p/ by Arab learners of English as foreign language (EFL, henceforth). Nine Arab EFL learners were assigned to two groups, control and experimental. The experimental group received phonetic instruction on how to produce the English sound /p/, whereas the control group did not. The production of the English sound /p/ was elicited from all the learners in both groups, once before the instruction and once after 11 weeks of the instruction. Two experienced native English instructors were asked to judge whether the students produced /p/ or /b/. The results generally showed no benefit from the phonetic instruction on the delayed production of /p/ by the EFL Arab learners. Although the results do not seem encouraging for pronunciation instruction, it is difficult to reach a conclusion with regard to pronunciation instruction due to the small sample size used in the current exploratory study, and to the difficulty to generalize the results on /p/ to all other sounds. Future studies may use larger sample sizes and include more sounds in their instruction methods.