they may not foresee a need to speak English in their future
lives. If pronunciation isn’t tested and doesn’t count for part
of their grade, why try?
For all of us, our voice is an important part of ourselves, and
our customary pronunciation is a vital part of our voice.
Throughout our lives, we’ve become used to hearing certain
sounds come out of our mouths, and not others. Our
pronunciation has always marked us as members of a certain
language or dialect group. Changing our pronunciation can
seem threatening, as if it will cause us to lose our identity as
a member of our own group. It seems safer and easier not to
change. (Gilbert 2008) However, if we see an attempt to
change pronunciation as adding a new skill or a new,
temporary language identity rather than replacing our
original selves, it can seem less threatening.
In addition, sometimes learners can feel uncomfortable if
they imitate a speaker or other model too exactly. They
might have the feeling that the speaker will think they’re
mocking them if they try to sound too similar. (After all,
young children sometimes make fun of a friend by imitating
their speech, and they might be scolded for this.) But in
pronunciation practice, we have to get over that feeling and
realize that imitating someone exactly is our goal—it’s a
valuable skill in pronunciation learning.
Learning pronunciation takes time
Pronouncing sounds involves both our minds and our bodies.
When we learn new sounds, we need to learn to move the
muscles of our mouths in new ways and change the
pronunciation habits we’ve built up all through our lives.
This isn’t easy, and, like learning any other muscular activity,
it takes a long time. Most people can’t learn to dance or to
play a new sport immediately; they have to start out slowly,
practice a lot, and gradually build up speed and skill. Our
mouths also need to build up muscle memory—the ability
to do something more easily after practicing it many times.
Our muscles begin to “remember” how to move in a certain
way because they’ve done it so often.Teaching pronunciation also takes time. We can’t just teach
something once and expect our students to master it right
away. We need to come back to the same point again and
again, giving students lots of review and continued practice.What do teachers need to know?
In order to teach pronunciation e"ectively, you need several
types of knowledge:- You need to know the facts about pronunciation: How
our mouths move to produce the sounds of language,
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