Rethink your old teaching methods: designing a pronunciation course for young teenagers



Abstract

ABSTRACT

 

Numerous studies (e.g. Lipińska, 2014; Majer, 2002; Nowacka, 2003; Sobkowiak, 2002; Szpyra-Kozłowska, et al., 2002; Szpyra-Kozłowska, 2008; Waniek-Klimczak, 2002; Wrembel, 2002) have shown that although teaching L2 pronunciation is included in university curricula, it is at the same time virtually absent at lower stages of education. Moreover, it has been noticed that teaching phonetics to younger learners is advisable and may be really effective (e.g. Lipińska, in press a; Nixon and Tomlinson, 2005). Undoubtedly, one can say that there are a lot of books and courses designed for adults written by and for Polish learners of English (e.g. Porzuczek et al., 2013; Sawala et al., 2011) or dedicated to international users (e.g. Baker, 2006; Hancock, 2008; Hewings, 2010). But the materials and methods used while working with adult learners and university students are no longer applicable if one wants to teach phonetics in a different environment and create an attractive and efficient course for children or young teenagers, since, as e.g. Komorowska (2011) notices, each foreign language course has to be characterised by realistic goals and appropriate methods and components.

The aim of this paper is to present various methods and materials which can be successfully applied while teaching English pronunciation to 11-13-year-olds. They have been used in three groups consisting of such L2 learners, and their usefulness and effectiveness have been proven by studies on both speech production and perception (e.g. Lipińska, in press b).


Keywords

foreign language learning; pronunciation teaching; teaching materials

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Published : 2018-03-07


LipińskaD. (2018). Rethink your old teaching methods: designing a pronunciation course for young teenagers. Theory and Practice of Second Language Acquisition, 4(1). Retrieved from https://journals.us.edu.pl/index.php/TAPSLA/article/view/6155

Dorota Lipińska  dorota.lipinska@yahoo.com
Institute of English, University of Silesia  Poland



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