Using a Phonetic Alphabet to Facilitate Pronunciation in an English Class
Mtro. Mario Alberto Tobías Rincón
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras
Estudios del Lenguaje
Through the years, it has been pointed out that pronunciation of a second language is one of
the most challenging skills to achieve by the students and a difficult skill to address in the classroom
by the teachers. Pronunciation is a language skill that cannot be changed just by doing conscious
effort and hard work, such as imitating a voice, drilling over and over, etc., because most of the times
teachers and students end up avoiding pronunciation practices since it is considered a tedious
activity. Most of the times, teachers have to make a greater effort to find a way to teach
pronunciation, but as found in a survey, teachers give different reasons to avoid teaching
pronunciation in their classes.
Most teachers agree that teaching pronunciation is difficult to teach, since they consider that
there is no time in class to practice it, contradicting themselves that communication is the main focus
in their classes. How can it be possible to teach communicative English without teaching
pronunciation? On the other hand, taking into consideration the students’ point of view, learners of
English also find it difficult to learn this skill, most of the times it is the mother tongue that interferes in
the achievement of it, but there is also a psychological barrier that blocks students’ availability to
develop the skill. What can teachers and students do to avoid having these feelings in the
classroom? Gilbert suggests that it is important for students and teachers to overcome such
frustrations and difficulties by focusing their attention on the development of pronunciation that is
“listener friendly.”
There are different techniques that teachers can use for teaching pronunciation in order to help
students to face the different number of challenges when learning a new language. Learners need to
be taught pronunciation in a communicative method. Unfortunately, there has been little development
of a communicative method for teaching pronunciation. There are two purposes in this talk, the first
one aims in explaining the reasons of why pronunciation is one of the least liked skills in the language
classroom taking into consideration teachers’ and students’ opinions. The second purpose is to
provide some different techniques a teacher can use to help students avoid those pronunciation
problems, focusing mainly on the importance of using the phonetic alphabet everyday within the class
being presented.