Investigating a speech and language therapy-informed approach to pronunciation teaching in the English language teaching classroom

This research explores and develops the area of English pronunciation teaching in the context of English as a second language set in the English Language Teaching classroom. Surveys of teachers’ attitudes and practice suggest that teachers find pronunciation a difficult, if important, area of English Language teaching (Murphy 2011, Foote et al. 2012, Henderson et al. 2012). As a practitioner who has moved from Speech and Language Therapy (SLT) to English Language Teaching (ELT) (and ELT teacher training), the limited interaction there has been between the two disciplines in research or in practice has been of interest. This study applies an SLT model of the aetiology, assessment, and remediation of L1 phonological delay to the area of L2 pronunciation teaching. Drawing from an SLT-Metaphon-style approach to intervention the model is derived from the clinical psycholinguistic framework of addressing the interlanguage phonological system to affect change in the pronunciation output of seven Spanish learners of English in an ELT classroom setting. Findings point to systemic change beyond surface-level form-focussed learning even after a relatively short intervention programme of six teaching hours. Core findings indicate the importance of engaging learners cognitively and equipping them with the appropriate concepts and metalanguage necessary for pronunciation teaching and learning. The inherent tension between necessary accuracy and the new horizons of pluringualism including pluriphonology form an integral part of the conceptual framework which emerges from the study. Practical applications of the study to the ELT and SLT environments are explored in the context of the new multicultural and multilingual environments in Ireland and internationally