Reflective Practice in Pronunciation Learning

mportance of Socio-affective Factors in Pronunciation Teaching

A look at the scarce research on pronunciation will reveal significant attention on cognitive aspects and issues of what/how to teach, while socio-psychological factors remain vastly ignored. If we are to understand our learners, however, we need to acknowledge them as socio-cultural and affective beings. How aware are we of our students' affective needs, of what brings them to the classroom? Many of the participants commented on the socio-cultural factors of improving pronunciation and named them as a primary motivating force. A learner, for example, says:

Improving pronunciation is a major goal for me. Being able to communicate gives me a sense of belongingness in this society.

We would like to underscore the psychological perspectives of pronunciation learning. According to the reflections, lack of confidence, frustration, even depression, are the emotions that have a profound effect on their learning or lead students to the pronunciation classroom. One student, fluent in English, but with a noticeable accent, approached me after class, and shared that he felt particularly discouraged about his pronunciation. The student, working as a server at a local pizzeria, had recently had an encounter with a customer, who yelled at him: "Go home if you cannot speak English!" While not all of the examples were so drastic, they nevertheless showed that we need to take a closer look at the nexus between pronunciation learning and the affective aspects shaping it. A number of the reflections stressed the issue of confidence in communication and the value of accurate pronunciation. The following example shows how lack of confidence and frustration lead to silencing the students across all of their academic contexts, and, potentially, to reducing the overall success in their graduate studies:

I think by improving my pronunciation I will be more willing to open up and speak in my [other than ESL] classes. Sometimes for fear of people not understanding or misunderstanding you, you prefer to keep quiet and unwilling to ask doubts or involve in other conversations.

Similarly, another student mentioned:

Because poor pronunciation is one of the biggest obstacles to communicate with others in U.S. I felt depressed for I can't express my idea clearly.

Conclusion

In this article, we aimed to demonstrate how reflections could be utilized as a tool of raising students' consciousness in the pronunciation classroom and, at the same time, to voice their beliefs and concerns about pronunciation learn

ing/teaching. Our findings imply that ESL teachers should develop pronunciation programs that integrate the following components:

1. Equally important focus on both segmental and suprasegmental features: Students' reflections strongly emphasized the value of teaching not only suprasegmental features of the L2, but also that of specific sounds. If learners do not have the phonetic and phonological awareness of English, they wouldn't know how to monitor their speech or employ other metacognitive strategies.
2. Balance between controlled and communicative learning environment: While the majority of students expressed a strong preference for individual attention and work on specific segments or suprasegmental features in controlled practice, many of the students recognized the necessity of practicing rules and applying strategies to everyday language use.
3. Understanding not only of our learners' cognitive needs but also of their socio-affective characteristics: Unfortunately, so far, there has been a gap between cognitive and affective factors in pronunciation research and pedagogy. However, most of the students reflected on the significance of socio-psychological factors related to the acquisition of pronunciation. To them, pronunciation is the physical, most obvious aspect of one's speech, and, thus, represents an inseparable component of their second language identities.

Finally, we argue that we should rethink the traditional teacher role in pronunciation instruction. As ESL professionals we should teach students how to learn pronunciation, not just how to produce sounds or patterns. In other words, learners should be able to analyze their strengths and weaknesses, and have the strategies to transform themselves into confident speakers of English.

References

• Brown, A. (Ed.) (1991). Teaching Pronunciation. A Book of Readings. London & New York: Routledge.
• Morley, J. (1994). A Multidemensional Curriculum Design for Speech-Pronunciation Instruction. In J. Morley (Ed.) Pronunciation Pedagogy and Theory: New Views, New Directions. Pantagraph: Bloomington.
• Pennington, M.C. (1992). Reflect
  《Reflective Practice in Pronunciation Learning》