Exploring Language Teaching and Phonetics

This Element explores ways in which language teachers, especially teachers of English, can benefit from knowledge of phonetics. It also offers recommendations for introducing and improving pronunciation teaching in the classroom.

While hoping that this Element is useful to instructors of all languages, the majority of the examples come from North American English (NAE) and the English language classroom.

At the same time, the Element acknowledges that English language teaching is rather different from the teaching of other languages, since nowadays, most interactions around the world in English do not involve a native speaker, and use of English as a lingua franca (ELF) has become widespread.

Teachers of English should be aware that their students may not want to mimic all aspects of native-speaker pronunciation; since some native-speaker patterns of speech, such as the extensive simplification and omission of sounds may not be helpful in enhancing intelligibility.