Pronunciation Obstacle Course

Abstract

Form our experience as a university professor, many language classrooms are not attentive to pronunciation and it is often neglected. The two major factors contributing to this situation are teachers’ inability to teach their students proper pronunciation (pronunciation does not exist in or is a minor part of school curricula or teachers themselves are unable to produce native or native-like pronunciation) and the linguistic barrier posed by the native language. For instance, students sometimes feel great discomfort if they have to express themselves in a foreign language. In case of Montenegro, certain English phonemes such as /θ/, classified as a voiceless dental fricative and /ð/, classified as a voiced dental fricative, when used in our language, represent the way a person with a speech sound disorder would speak. On the more positive note, our students, more and more, travel to different countries, which improves their ability to speak a foreign language fluently and attain a native-like accent. In this paper, we will deal with certain misconceptions about pronunciation and then our attention will turn to elements affecting the way pronunciation is learnt. Towards the end of our paper, we will consider what language learners need in terms of improving their pronunciation. This is of vital importance since pronunciation may be a great contributing factor, leading to an improved L2 perception.

How Is a Foreign Language Pronounced? A Case Study of Indonesian as a Foreign Language Among Speakers of Other Languages

“…Furthermore, it affects the other aspects of language acquisition. Thus, studying pronunciation is not only the first but also the most difficult and crucial step in learning a foreign language (Ivanović, 2019;Lleó & Ulloa, 2019).…”