Interest in pronunciation learning and teaching has increased significantly in the past few years. Studies and resources in the area have proliferated, but it is important to know whether they have influenced teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) and English as a second language (ESL). The purpose of this study was to investigate the beliefs and practices of Brazilian EFL teachers. Convenience and snowball sampling were employed to recruit 60 participants, who completed an online survey on pronunciation teaching and learning. Descriptive statistics was used to analyse trends, while qualitative responses were coded for common topics. The findings suggest that the instructors had generally informed views about pronunciation and positive attitudes toward its teaching. Their teaching practices tended to be traditional: the predominant approach was to deal with word-level features, especially problematic sounds, through repetition as the need arose. Although most of the respondents claimed to be comfortable teaching pronunciation, they reported a wish for more pronunciation training, as have other instructors in prior studies (e.g. Burgess & Spencer, 2000; Foote, Holtby, & Derwing, 2011).
This study analyzed changes in the pronunciation-related cognitions of undergraduate TESL students from two Canadian universities during their first term in their programs. The students from one university attended a 13-week course in phonology and pronunciation teaching, while those from the other university received no specific training in pronunciation. Towards the end of the term, the participants who received specialized training had more favorable views of explicit pronunciation teaching and became more confident in their ability to teach pronunciation than the comparison group. The course also helped the participants increase in awareness of their own speech and limitations. The findings point to the importance of native-nonnative speaker interactions in shaping cognitions and suggest that more support to nonnative-speaking TESL students and more training in the use of communicative activities would be helpful.
First language (L1) English speakers have been observed to organize their oral discourse into macro-units analogous to paragraphs in writing. Th ese units, called paratones (BROWN, 1977) or phonological paragraphs (TENCH, 1996;THOMPSON, 2003), are characterized by extra high pitch at the beginning of a new discourse topic (YULE, 1980 (TENCH, 1996;THOMPSON, 2003), são caracterizadas por um tom alto no início de um novo tópico discursivo (YULE, 1980
Resumo: Falantes de inglês como língua materna (L1) organizam seu discurso oral em macro-unidades semelhantes a parágrafos na escrita. Essas unidades, chamadas em inglês de paratones (BROWN, 1977) ou parágra-fos fonológicos
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