Despite the existence of many english pronunciation books in the
international market, a few of them respond to teachers and students’
needs for pronunciation materials that serve as reference manuals and
textbooks at the same time. in addition, most pronunciation books are
standard and are considered suitable for learners with different l1
(first language) backgrounds and with different pronunciation
problems. this is caused by the wide gap that has often been noticed
between laboratory phonology and classroom practice. researchers
continue working in their laboratories experimenting methods on
small samples of learners, and publish results of their research in very
specialized journals using a highly technical language and
sophisticated statistics. language teachers, on the other side, maintain
their traditional practices and disconnection with research findings. as
a result, little of research results on how to teach pronunciation
effectively reached classrooms and was implemented to help learners.
this book comes as a response to the need for bridging the gap
between research in phonetics and phonology and classroom practice
in english pronunciation teaching. it is essentially designed to meet
the needs of english major students at the initial levels of the ba
university degree (and its equivalents). part i is theoretical
foundations on which the book is based. it is addressed to teachers of
pronunciation and/or oral skills at the university level, with the
assumption that many of these teachers are researchers at the same
time. part i displays three fundamental goals of the book which are: (i)
to help students develop an intelligible and a comprehensible
pronunciation, not necessarily a native-like pronunciation, (ii) give
precedence to the teaching of prosody (stress, intonation, weak forms,
and rhythm), and (iii) use a cognitive-communicative approach in
pronunciation instruction. this part elucidates how teaching goals are implemented and how the book should be used. it also provides
justification for the choice of north american english as a model
accent in the book. part i explains the rationale behind the use of five
complementary stages in each teaching unit and presents the content
and layout of each of these five stages. moreover, it clarifies the role
of the teacher as well as role of feedback so that teachers and learners
make a successful use of the book.
part ii introduces the user to the sound system of north american
english (nae). it discusses intricacies of the relationship between
spelling and pronunciation in english. basic notions such as vowels,
consonants, syllables, and prosody are introduced, and examples are
provided in order to prepare learners for the following parts of the
book. part ii acquaints learners with some basic differences between
british and american english and presents the basic characteristics of
north american english. teachers are, however, required to simplify
what they see as complex content in this part to fit the level of their
students.
part iii of the book includes nine teaching units devoted to the
prosody and connected speech features of nae. the objective of
this part is to impart segmental features such as word and phrase-level
stress, weak forms, intonation, rhythm, as well as connected speech
features to the leaner. part iv (the vowels of nae), then, introduces
vowel sounds and their characteristics in nine teaching units. in this
part, contrast between vowels that are often confused by learners is
focused instead of presenting each vowel as a separate entity. part v
(the consonants of nae) is devoted to consonants, with a special
focus on either the similarity or the contrast between pairs of
consonants. characteristic consonantal sounds of nae are allocated
separate units within part v (unit 21, for instance, is devoted to the
different pronunciations of the /t/ sound in american english). an
audio cd that includes sound files of native speakers of north
american english (for use in computers) accompanies the book. language is primarily speech and pronunciation is inseparable from
the rest of language skills. therefore, all the teaching units of the
textbook follow complementary stages that have the same objective of
raising the learners’ awareness of the importance of accurate and
intelligible pronunciation to meaning and to successful
communication in english as a second language.
