Atividades de pronúncia no ensino de inglês como língua estrangeira: reflexões com professores em contexto de aulas individuais

Abstract

In Applied Linguistics there is increasing attention to foreign language pronunciation, and many pedagogic ideas explore beyond the classic practice of ‘listen and repeat’, which is still very common in many language teaching contexts. Many aspects of pronunciation need to be treated in class, and repetition only is not sufficient to address them all. Research has shown that description of the phonological structures, listening discrimination activities, and other forms of oral production that do not focus only on repetition show efficacy in pronunciation development, speaking, and listening. Repetition activities also can be reshaped to reach better contextualization and student engagement. The advancements in research, however, find little insertion in many language learning courses and teacher education. This research aimed to analyze how some teachers of English as a foreign language understand pronunciation instruction and its function in class. The context studied was one-to-one teaching. Three teachers and their respective students participated. They were exposed to pronunciation activity proposals, and selected the ones they found could be most helpful for their students, edited them, and implemented them in classes. Firstly, the teachers were interviewed about their perspectives on pronunciation and pronunciation teaching. Then, ideas for activities were sent by the researcher. The teachers then recorded the activities chosen. The researcher made an effort not to impose his views on the teachers, but to help them according to their own approaches. The students briefly presented their impressions of the activities. Later, recall sessions were recorded with each teacher for them to observe and reflect on the class. A last contact (via text message) was made with the teachers to ask questions that were raised during the analysis of the recall sessions. The results revealed that the teachers were keen to complement their common pronunciation instruction practices with the activities chosen. It was possible to recognize a clear influence of their teacher education backgrounds in their approaches. The three teachers demonstrated different views on the function of pronunciation and how to teach it. The students showed openness to the activities presented to them and pointed out that they would like to practice more with these activities.