The Evolution of Pronunciation Teaching

  • Analytic-Linguistic Approaches

    Analytic-Linguistic Approaches
    It utilizes information and tools such as a phonetic, alphabet, articulatory descriptions, charts of the vocal apparatus, contrastive information, and other aids to supplement listening, imitation, and production. It explicitly informas the learner of and focuses attention on the sounds and rhythms of the target language.
  • Intuitive-Imitative Approaches

    The student listens to and imitates the rhythms and sounds of the target language (Before the late ninteenth century).
  • The Reform Movement

    The Reform Movement
    This movemente was influenced greatly by severel phoneticians who formed the Internationl Phonetic Assocition in 1886 and developed the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). It resulted from the establishment of phonetics as a science dideicated to describing and analyzing the sound systems of languages. A phonetic alphabet made it possible to represent the sounds of any language visually and accurately (1890s).
  • Grammar Translation and Reading-Based Approaches

    Grammar Translation and Reading-Based Approaches
    In such methods, grammar or text comprehension is taught through the medium of the learner's native language, and oral communication int the target language is not a primary instructional objective.
  • Naturalistict Methods

    Naturalistict Methods
    It includes comprehension-based methods that devote a period of instruction solely to listening before any speaking is allowed. Proponents maintain that the initial focus on listening without pressure to speak gives the learners the opportunity to internalize the target sound system (late 1800s and early 1900s).
  • Audiolingualism (US) or the Oral Approach (UK)

    Audiolingualism (US) or the Oral Approach (UK)
    In classrooms pronunciation is very important and taught explicitly from the start. Teachers use information from phonetics, such as a visitual transcription system or charts that demostrate the articulation of sounds. Teachers use the minimal-pair drill, which uses words that differ only by a single sound (1940s-1950s)
  • Community Language Learning

    Community Language Learning
    Learner decides what degree of accuracy in pronunciation to aim for. The method used is that teachers correction via repetition and it is focusing on fluency, then accuracy.
  • Cognitive Approach

    Cognitive Approach
    It is influenced by transformational-generative grammar (chomsky 1957, 1975) and cognitive psychology (Neisser 1967), viewed language as rule-governed behavior rather that habit formation. Time would be better spent on teaching more learnable objectives, such as grammatical structures and words (1060-1970).
  • The Silent Way

    The Silent Way
    It is focusing on accurancy frist, then fluency, teacher correcton cued by sound-color charts and Fidel charts; use of gesture and facial exprssion. The is a strong emphasis on accurancy of production; words and phrases are repeated until they are near nativelike.
  • Direct Method

    Direct Method
    In Direct Method foreign-language instruction, which first gained popularity in the late 1800s and early 1900s, pronunciation is taught through intuition and imitation; students imitate a model - the teacher or a recording - and do their best to approximate the model through imition and repetition.
  • Communicative Language Teaching

    Communicative Language Teaching
    It also called the Communicative Approach, took hold in the 80s and is currently the dominant method in language teaching. This focus on language as communication brings renewed urgency to the teaching of pronunciation, since both emperical and anecdotal evidence indictes that there is a threshold level of pronunciation for nonnative speakers of English.