PRONUNCIATION MATERIALS
Keywords:
An important contextual factor is the needs of learners and teachers.Although the needs of learners have been widely studied, the needs of teachers have not captured the same attention . This is surprising because in school environments, teachers are the first users of materials and make decisions about what to cover and what to leave out.However,Abstract
Pronunciation is increasingly popular in professional conferences where sessions are often filled to overflowing. Similarly, pronunciation materials today show up in a wide variety of sources. Baker and Murphy (2011) tell us that “the past decade has witnessed an explosion in the number of … classroom textbooks; teacher’s manuals; classroombased research reports; teacher-training books; book chapters; journal articles; CDROMs; videos, computer software; Internet resources, most of which are geared
directly toward ESL/EFL teachers” (p. 37). This explosion means that research into pronuncation materials needs to be based on sound research and best practices. Grant (1995) provided an early look at pronunciation materials development, but little
attention has been paid to this area until recently. This chapter presents principles that should underlie pronunciation materials and then examines how four skills books follow those principles.
References
Baker, A., & Murphy, J. (2011). Knowledge base of pronunciation teaching: Staking
out the territory.TESL Canada Journal, 28(2), 29–50.
Burgess, J., & Spencer, S. (2000). Phonology and pronunciation in integrated language
teaching and teacher education. System, 28(2), 191–215.
Canniveng, C., & Martinez, M. (2003). Materials development and teacher training. In
B. Tomlinson (Ed.), Developing materials for language teaching (pp. 479–489). New
York, NY: Cromwell Press.
