Future Directions for Pronunciation Teaching: Intelligibility, Content, and Oral Communication

Abstract

Although pronunciation has become an important component of a communicative approach to language teaching, the development of pronunciation research and teaching is faced with three important, unresolved issues. First, pronunciation theory and practice suffers from a poorly developed understanding of intelligibility, a weakness which stunts significant progress in research and teaching. Second, the widely accepted belief that suprasegmentals such as stress, rhythm and intonation are more important in intelligibility than vowel and consonant sounds is overly simplistic and should be more carefully examined. Finally, while the integration of pronunciation and oral communication curricula is critically important, attempts to integrate have . often been less than successful. Reasons for this are explored and new directions for integration are suggested.