Integrating Pronunciation
Into ESL/EFL Classrooms
John M. Levis and Linda Grant
Hiroko often says “led” when she should say “red.”
Jasmine sounds like she’s speaking too quickly because of an
unfamiliar speech rhythm.
Pierre seems to emphasize the wrong word in a sentence,
making it hard to follow his ideas.
M
ost language teachers are familiar with students
such as these and agree that intelligible pronun-
ciation is vital to successful communication.
Similarly, most students see pronunciation as an important
part of learning to speak, and therefore ask that more class
time be devoted to pronunciation. Despite the recognized
importance of pronunciation, teachers often remain
uncertain about how to incorporate it into the curriculum.
Given that most courses emphasize general oral communi-
cation over pronunciation (Murphy, 1991), teachers must
seek creative ways to integrate pronunciation into speaking-
oriented classes in a manner clearly related to the oral
communication goals of the course.
We assume that it is desirable to address pronunciation
teaching in the context of speaking (Firth, 1993), and that
a speaking-oriented approach serves the communication
needs of students more effectively than approaches focusing
on either fluency or articulatory goals alone (Morley,
1991). Murphy (1991) echoes this belief by saying that
pronunciation instruction “needs to be integrated with
broader level communicative activities in which speakers
and listeners engage in . . . meaningful communication”
(p. 60). Although we believe it is best to achieve this
integration without shifting the focus of the class to
pronunciation, we acknowledge that implementation
remains a work in progress. Approaches favoring the
integration of pronunciation into oral communication have
been espoused for more than 10 years, but teachers have
received little clear direction about how to accomplish this
integration.
In this article, we address the practical challenges
related to integrating pronunciation into oral communica-
tion. First, we describe the central difficulty in integrating
pronunciation into the speaking classroom. Next, we
suggest all-skills principles to guide the incorporation of
pronunciation into oral communication courses. Finally, in
the context of four typical classroom activities, we explore
possible implementation strategies that can be applied to a
wide variety of instructional settings. For the most part, the
activities focus on suprasegmental features such as stress,
rhythm, and intonation, not because segmentals (i.e.,
VOL. 12 NO. 2
consonants and vowels) are unimportant in communica-
tion, but because suprasegmentals are more clearly
connected to functions of spoken English.
Approaches favoring the integration of
pronunciation into oral communication
have been espoused for more than
10 years, but teachers have received
little clear direction about how to
accomplish this integration.
Teaching Pronunciation and Oral
Communication: The Challenges
Celce-Murcia, Brinton, and Goodwin (1996) provide a
five-stage model for teaching pronunciation communica-
tively. Their model generally moves from raising awareness
of an aspect of pronunciation, to perception or focused
listening, to oral practice. For segmental and
suprasegmental features, oral practice progresses from
controlled practice in oral reading, to semistructured
practice in information gap activities and dialogues, to less
structured communicative practice. In other words, the oral
practice moves from a focus on phonological form to a
dual focus on form and meaning.
Teachers can apply this framework in various ways, but
in our classroom and teacher-training experience, it is
usually applied in two ways, depending on what skill is
central to a course. In classes devoted to pronunciation, for
example, teachers apply the framework usually by moving
from controlled pronunciation practice to less structured,
communicative speaking practice. In this case, however,
teachers often spend the majority of time on controlled or
guided practice, and give short shrift to the more commu-
nicative end of the pronunciation spectrum. Actual speak-
ing practice is usually unrelated to pronunciation or
ignored altogether.
In courses devoted to speaking or oral communication,
teachers apply the framework by moving in the opposite
direction, starting with less structured speaking practice
and perhaps moving into pronunciation. In this case,
however, teachers often address pronunciation
unsystematically, applying it primarily as a corrective
measure when errors are too prominent to be ignored.
TESOL JOURNAL 13
Either way, students often fail to get the full range of
practice activities they need for improving speaking and
pronunciation. Consequently, even when teachers want to
teach pronunciation communicatively, they have little sense
of how to weave it effectively into a listening and speaking
or all-skills course so that it consists of more than ad hoc
corrections, but does not take up so much time that the
communicative goals of the course are neglected.
Similarly, existing textbooks offer two primary avenues
for integrating pronunciation and speaking instruction. On
the one hand, although current pronunciation-based texts
include communicative activities, most are organized
around pronunciation features and are not suitable as
primary texts in oral communication courses. On the
other hand, a striking feature of many speaking-based or
integrated-skills texts is the absence of explicit, sustained
focus on pronunciation. When pronunciation is included,
it usually addresses listening comprehension or consists of
carefully controlled oral reading or repetition. Speaking-
oriented pronunciation instruction, when it appears at all,
consists of carefully controlled oral reading or repetition.
The current situation closely resembles that described a
decade ago, where one researcher found that, in oral
communication texts, “activities centered around speaking
and listening are vastly more common . . . than are
pronunciation activities” (Murphy, 1991, p. 64).
Guiding Principles
Our attempts to incorporate pronunciation into speaking
classes are based on several principles gleaned from practice
and theory. These principles promote the integration of
pronunciation in ways that link features of speech with
their communicative functions rather than ways that
promote noncontextualized or irrelevant work on the
sound system.
Principle 1: Aim for a Primary Though
Not Exclusive Focus on Suprasegmentals
The first principle, that instruction should focus primarily
on suprasegmentals (e.g., stress, rhythm, intonation),
comes from the belief that mastery of suprasegmentals is
Even when teachers want to teach
pronunciation communicatively, they have
little sense of how to weave it effectively
into a listening and speaking or all-skills
course so that it consists of more than ad
hoc corrections, but does not take up so
much time that the communicative goals
of the course are neglected.
14 TESOL JOURNAL
likely to make a greater contribution to intelligibility than
mastery of segmentals (McNerney & Mendelsohn, 1993).
However, intelligibility is not our justification for their
importance in the speaking classroom. Rather,
suprasegmentals, by virtue of their connection to discourse
meaning and connected speech, are more likely than
segmentals to be directly relevant to speaking skills. Because
features such as stress, rhythm, and intonation affect not
just words but whole utterances, they contribute more
directly to skill in using the spoken language.
Principle 2: Maintain a Central Focus
on Speaking in the Class
The second principle is based on an assumption that “a
pronunciation syllabus should begin with the widest
possible focus [general speaking] and move gradually in on
specific problems” (Firth, 1993, p. 173). It also assumes
that pronunciation is a subset of the principal skill areas of
speaking and listening (Murphy, 1991) and, as such, should
always be taught with reference to those skills. As experi-
enced pronunciation teachers know, students who are able
to produce new sounds when they focus only on pronun-
ciation face a significant gap in using their new pronuncia-
tions in meaningful communication (Celce-Murcia,
Brinton, & Goodwin, 1996). We therefore assume that
incorporating pronunciation into a speaking curriculum is
essential in helping bridge this gap. Teaching pronunciation
in the context of speaking also means that features that are
targeted should be those that arise naturally from the
speaking activity and contribute to the success of the
interaction. This is in contrast to most approaches to
addressing pronunciation, which only incidentally relate
pronunciation features to success in speaking tasks.
Principle 3: Pronunciation Instruction
Should Fit the Constraints of the
Speaking Task
The third principle relates to the varieties of tasks that
make up speaking. Speakers can sometimes take advantage
of the opportunity to plan, as in many formal speaking
tasks, such as giving presentations and teaching. At other
times, speech is spontaneous, with the discourse being
coconstructed in the course of speaking. Traditional pro-
nunciation instruction, which most frequently assumes
careful preparation and planning, is better suited to formal
speaking tasks that allow for planning. However, students
also need to be able to use pronunciation as a tool in
relatively unplanned conversation, and instruction must
meet those needs as well (Levis, 2001). Integrating pronun-
ciation into the speaking classroom should address planned
and unplanned speaking.
VOL. 12 NO. 2
Teaching Pronunciation and Oral
Communication: A Solution
The following activities are examples of ways in which key
pronunciation features can be incorporated into speaking
tasks intended to help students develop oral communica-
tion skills: (a) word clarity in public speaking, (b) thought
groups in storytelling, (c) intonation in conversation, and
(d) focus in comparisons. Consistent with our three
principles, each activity gives priority to suprasegmental
features, includes a specific focus on pronunciation while
maintaining a broad focus on speaking and communica-
tion, and fits the parameters of the speaking task.
Activity 1: Word Clarity in Oral Presentations
Oral presentations, a common assignment in a wide variety
of ESL/EFL classes, offer opportunities to target many
pronunciation skills with minimal class instruction. Issues
such as phrasing, rhythm, and sentence focus are especially
valuable in this planned context. One other area that is
especially affected by planning is word clarity.
Word clarity encompasses whatever difficulties students
have in saying words so that listeners can understand them.
This can include consonant and vowel sounds, the length-
ening of stressed vowels, stress patterns in multisyllabic
words, and the pronunciation of lexical units, such as on
the other hand or to sum up.
The following sentence, reconstructed from a Thai
student’s oral presentation, illustrates several of these issues.
The underlined r letters were all pronounced in a way that
was perceptually similar to /l/, the italicized ch spellings
were pronounced like sh, and the main stress in characteris-
tics was on the second syllable rather than the fourth.
Names are related to charácteristics of the children.
This example illustrates that suprasegmentals, though
usually more applicable to speaking tasks, are not always
easy to separate from segmentals. Both kinds of errors may
have a cumulative effect on intelligibility. First, the word
characteristics did not match the stress pattern (a
suprasegmental issue) expected by the listeners, which
affected the intelligibility of the utterance. This change in
stress also affected the pronunciation of vowels (usually a
segmental issue), which is a crucial clue to stress for native-
speaker listeners (Cutler, Dahan, & van Donselaar, 1997).
In addition, recent evidence suggests that the inaccurate
pronunciation of consonant sounds (a segmental issue) can
affect a listener’s ability to successfully decode speech,
especially when the listener and speaker are nonnative
speakers and do not share the same native language
(Jenkins, 2000).
The potential for incorporating pronunciation instruc-
tion into oral presentation assignments is based on stu-
dents’ opportunity to plan. Presentations are a controlled
situation that places demands on speaking and pronuncia-
tion skills. A suggested sequence is shown in Figure 1.
VOL. 12 NO. 2
Working on Word Clarity in Presentations
1. Have students prepare an oral presentation.
2. Ask students to identify five key words to pronounce
correctly.
3. Ask students to practice and record their presenta-
tions on audiotapes.
4. Have students listen to their audiotape recordings
and evaluate their presentations and pronunciation
of key words.
5. Ask students to hand in their tape recordings, along
with a written copy of their presentations with the
key words identified and a written self-evaluation.
6. Record general feedback on the students’ audio-
tapes, including comments on their pronunciation
of the five key words they selected and the
identification of up to five additional key words for
them to practice.
7. Ask students to revise and practice their presenta-
tions after receiving your feedback.
8. Have students give their presentations in class.
9. Evaluate their class presentations and pronuncia-
tion of all key words.
Figure 1. An instructional sequence to help students work
on word clarity in oral presentations.
Incorporating work on word clarity has two main
elements, the students’ choices and the teacher’s feedback.
As students prepare their oral presentations, they are asked
to identify five key words they want to pronounce clearly.
Depending on their awareness of their pronunciation,
students can identify these key words with or without the
teacher’s assistance. They should then prepare their presen-
tations; practice them orally, paying careful attention to
their pronunciation of the key words; record their presenta-
tions; and write a self-evaluation to submit along with their
recordings. The teacher then listens to the tapes, giving oral
(recorded) or written feedback, or both, on general speak-
ing, organization, and the pronunciation of the key words.
The teacher can suggest up to five more words that were
difficult to understand for the students to practice. The
students then revise and practice their presentations before
giving them in class. The final evaluation includes pronun-
ciation of all the key words identified by the teacher and
students.
One teacher who wanted to incorporate pronunciation
practice into an already full course load expressed the
following after she tried this activity.
[I found that] it wasn’t a huge time commitment . . . and
the students seemed thrilled with the individual attention in
the form of a tape that they could play at home. However,
more than the practice it gave the students, I found that I
became more aware of areas that we need to work on . . . .
Something about removing the faces and body language
helped me really hear the students’ voices. (Jessica Mercer
Zerr, personal communication, March 2002)
TESOL JOURNAL 15
 Working on pronunciation in the context of presenta-
tions offers several advantages. First, teachers can focus on
individual strengths and weaknesses so that students’ skills
can be better assessed and instruction targeted more
effectively. Listening to students one at a time helps
teachers identify common issues more easily so that they
can address these issues later in class. Furthermore, because
students can plan their presentations and deliver them
relatively free from interruption, they have the opportunity,
with teacher input, to identify words and phrases that are
difficult to pronounce. Students can, for example, record
their practice sessions on audiotapes (or as digital files on
the computer) so that the teacher can listen and provide
feedback before the actual presentation. Free conversation
offers little such opportunity. Depending on the students’
comfort level with presentations, this activity can range
from a task resembling oral reading to one that is less
controlled, centering around key words, as in the tasks
described by Yule and Macdonald (1994). Either way, the
opportunity to plan, a key feature of the speaking task,
allows students to target their pronunciation of key
vocabulary.
Activity 2: Phrasing and Storytelling
Students in all types of ESL classes share personal stories in
writing and in speaking. Personal stories are just one type
of narrative in a category that includes fables, fairy tales,
and newspaper stories. Narratives offer a rich context for
enhancing language skills, especially at the intermediate
levels of proficiency, where students are most comfortable
discussing topics related primarily to self and their immedi-
ate environments (Breiner-Sanders, Lowe, Miles, &
Swender, 2000). Because narratives involve strings of
sentences or paragraph-level discourse, they provide a good
medium for practicing another high-priority
suprasegmental feature—thought grouping, also known as
chunking or phrasing.
Speakers of English organize long stretches of speech
into short, meaningful, grammatical units called thought
groups. If speakers do not divide the stream of speech into
meaningful phrases, listeners have difficulty processing the
speech, no matter how clearly each word is pronounced.
Gilbert (1994) offers this example of a long sentence
divided into relatively short groupings (slash marks denote
pauses): “The sign says that construction/ will be finished
by April,/ but that was obviously optimistic” (p. 46). Many
practitioners believe that slowing the rate of speech and
combining words into meaningful chunks can improve
fluency as well as overall intelligibility (Gilbert, 1994;
Morley, 1994).
In this activity, thought groups are integrated into oral
narratives. Figure 2 outlines a suggested sequence for the
activity.
This activity is applicable to any story, report, short
presentation, or journal entry that students prepare or
rehearse in advance to give orally. Students should listen to
16 TESOL JOURNAL
Improving Storytelling by Paying Attention to Phrasing
1. Choose a paragraph-length narrative (or write
one) to read aloud to the class.
2. Rewrite or type the story, dividing it into thought
groups.
3. To visualize the thought groups, imagine the text is
a poem and arrange it into short lines.
4. Read the text in chunks, pausing briefly at the
end of each line.
Figure 2. An instructional sequence to help students
work on phrasing in storytelling.
one or more paragraph-length reports, myths, fables, tales,
or personal narratives as models. The teacher can then
introduce the notion of chunking by having students
decide how they would divide the narrative. Figure 3
presents an extract of a model narrative, and shows how
the text could be chunked to work on phrasing.
Other ways of phrasing the narrative in Figure 3 are
also possible, depending on how speakers interpret the
situation. With practice, most students develop the ability
to phrase at appropriate points in the discourse. Teachers
can remind students that if they think about “where a
speaker can logically pause in a stream of speech, . . .
[they] can separate an utterance into thought groups”
(Celce-Murcia, Brinton, & Goodwin, 1996, p. 174). As
Learning to Drive
When I came here, I could not drive. I knew nothing,
not even simple things, such as which pedal is for the
gas and which one is for the brakes, and how to use
the rearview mirror to see the cars behind me. After six
lessons, I took the driving test and passed. It was simple.
I was asked to drive a few blocks and just do basic
things, such as pull over and back up. Luckily, it didn’t
include parking because I couldn’t park then, and I
can’t park now.
Narrative chunks
When I came here,
I could not drive.
I knew nothing,
not even simple things,
such as which pedal
is for the gas
and which one
is for the brakes,
and how to use the rearview mirror
to see the cars
behind me.
After six lessons,
I took the driving test
and passed . . . .
Figure 3. Hypothetical narrative extract illustrating how
text can be divided into chunks, or thought groups.
VOL. 12 NO. 2
students move into more spontaneous speaking formats,
they often come to realize that conveying information in
chunks is helpful not only as a means for listeners to
process information but also as a strategy for speakers to
organize their thoughts.
Activity 3: Intonation and Conversation
An important goal of most speaking classes is to develop
students’ conversational abilities. By conversation, we mean
the coconstructed discourse of normal talk, where two or
more interlocutors initiate and respond to a changing
variety of topics. Dialogues are commonly used to model,
among other things, conversational style, appropriate
grammar and vocabulary, and functional uses of spoken
language. Dialogues are also ideal for controlled practice
with conversational discourse in which speech rhythm,
focus, and intonation work together with body language.
The vignette below demonstrates how the intonation
of discourse markers (Schiffrin, 1988) and backchanneling
cues (common vocalizations in English, such as OK, umm
hmm, well, oh, and yeah, that communicate to an interlocu-
tor that we are listening to and following what is being
said) can be integrated into discourse practice using
dialogues. Many spoken discourse markers are hard to
define and have various meanings that are closely tied to
intonation (the use of voice pitch) and other pronunciation
cues. They also are important in regulating conversational
speech, but do not occur in written speech and are rarely
explicitly taught (Schiffrin, 1988). Specifically, this activity
focuses on the intonation of the backchanneling cues umm
hmm and hmm umm to signal listener attention, agree-
ment, and negation or disagreement. These cues are
associated with fixed intonation patterns so that they have
almost become intonational idioms. Their use and typical
intonation patterns are illustrated in the constructed
dialogue below, with the accented syllable in boldface. The
attention or agreement marker usually has rising intonation
(B1, A3), with the accent on the second syllable, whereas
the negation or disagreement marker falls in pitch and is
accented on the first syllable (B2).
A1: And so, it was a really difficult test.
B1: Umm hmm [meaning: I’m listening or I agree].
A2: Have you ever taken physics?
B2: Hmm umm [meaning: No]. I heard it’s
really hard.
A3: Umm hmm [meaning: I agree]. It’s way harder
than I imagined.
These two discourse markers are verbal gestures with
conventionalized forms and intonations. They are also
usually accompanied by physical gestures (body language).
Umm hmm is associated with a small up-and-down nod of
the head, whereas Hmm umm, like other negative markers
in English, is accompanied by a small side-to-side head
shake. Although the body language is not always available
as a cue (as in telephone conversations), learning to make
VOL. 12 NO. 2
use of these and other discourse markers means also using
intonation and body language appropriately. Such mastery
will help promote overall communicative competence. We
believe that when students practice the simple form and
limited discourse uses of many discourse markers in
planned dialogues (where creativity is at a minimum), they
will be more likely to use them in unplanned speech.
Figure 4 suggests a sequence of conversational activities
Practice Using Discourse Markers and Intonation
in Conversation
Prepare and read a written dialogue with
discourse markers.
1. Elicit from students the functions and meanings of
the discourse markers (awareness).
2. Use controlled practice with pronunciation of
discourse markers using sentences such as “I was
really scared,” answered by “Umm Hmm” (with
rising intonation to indicate the listener is paying
attention or is in agreement), or “Have you ever
been to Japan?,” answered by “Umm Hmm”
(with rising intonation to mean yes) or “Hmm Umm”
(with falling intonation to mean no).
3. Use controlled practice with body language
associated with discourse markers, if applicable,
such as shaking the head from side to side to
mean no for “Hmm Umm” (with falling intonation).
4. Pair students to practice dialogues, asking them to
focus on language, intonation, and body
language.
5. Ask students to perform dialogues.
Figure 4. An instructional sequence to help students learn
discourse markers and practice intonation.
that can help students learn discourse markers and their
intonations.
Teaching discourse markers may require the teacher to
adapt textbook dialogues because textbook dialogues
frequently do not include these markers of coherence. The
no meaning in the dialogue above is often written as “No, I
haven’t,” whereas the agreement meaning would likely be
written as “Yes, it is.” The I’m listening meaning is not
easily paraphrased. Adapting textbook dialogues so that
students can identify and comprehend these discourse
markers can be done by replacing short answers with
discourse markers or by asking advanced or native English
speakers to read the dialogue, then role play it without
using the text, using discourse markers that come to them
naturally in speech.
Activity 4: Focus and
Comparison-Contrast Writing
In English for academic purposes classes, students demon-
strate mastery of course content through writing. In the
TESOL JOURNAL 17
process of creating written products, students are expected
to discover relationships and synthesize information from
readings and lectures. A common format for exploring
relationships between ideas is comparison and contrast.
Students might compare two or more readings, points of
view, characters, or places. For example, Figure 5 presents
Chicago Chicago & San Francisco
San Francisco
in Midwest in West
many tourists
spread out compact
distinctive
flat skylines hilly
snows often rarely snows
have harbors
Figure 5: Venn diagram used to compare and contrast
two cities (based on Blanton, 1995, p. 215).
an example of a Venn diagram, a graphic organizer used to
help organize an essay comparing and contrasting two cities.
Even in courses dedicated to reading and writing,
students spend time listening and speaking. Once students
have read, taken lecture notes, and begun to organize their
ideas, they often discuss content, a step that provides an
opportunity to practice pronunciation points in realistic
conversational exchanges. In discussing contrasts, for
instance, students face an immediate pronunciation need—
using focus, that is, the element in the sentence with the
greatest emphasis, to signal contrasting elements. For
example, a student verbalizing the contrast in weather
depicted in Figure 5 might say the following (capitalization
indicates focus).
It OFten snows in ChiCAgo, but San FranCISco almost
NEVer has snow.
This ability to emphasize what is key or important in
spoken discourse is crucial to intelligibility, especially in
international contexts (Jenkins, 2000).
In Figure 6, the use of focus to highlight contrasts was
integrated into an oral prewriting activity in an ESL
writing class. The students’ assignment was to draft a
paragraph comparing the features of two cars. (The task is
adaptable to a variety of comparisons, such as apartments
and places to shop.) The use of focus to highlight contrast-
ing elements was incorporated into the instructional
sequence.
First, to help the students organize their ideas, the
teacher provided a chart with points of comparison, shown
in Figure 7. Using material from their texts, the students
filled in the chart with the features of Automobile A and
18 TESOL JOURNAL
Comparing Two Things Using Contrastive Focus
1. Underline the contrasting elements in the chart.
2. Create a sentence for each main difference.
3. Take turns saying your sentences.
4. Emphasize the contrasting elements in each
sentence to help your partner understand your
meaning (e.g., the American-made car has poor
gas mileage, but the gas mileage on the
German-made car is much better).
Figure 6. Instructional sequence to help students practice
using focus to compare or contrast.
Automobile B. As a class, the students discussed ways in
which they might join clauses to create sentences in their
paragraphs. Then, working in pairs, students shared and
compared the information in their charts.
If students are learning about focus for the first time,
they will probably not use it correctly. Instead, tasks such
as these can serve to draw students’ attention to the form
and how it functions in communication, an essential first
step in language learning. In this class, however, because
students were working with the same content for several
days, the use of focus to highlight contrasts was recycled in
natural classroom interactions. On one day, for example,
students brought their drafts to class and identified the use
Comparing Two Automobiles
Feature Automobile A Automobile B
Age 3 years old 6 years old
Cost $8,500 $6,500
Size 4 passengers 5 passengers
large trunk small trunk
Make American-made German-made
Gas mileage 2 5 miles per 3 5 miles per
gallon/highway gallon/highway
Reliability very reliable not very reliable
Figure 7. Chart using focus (indicated in boldfaced italics)
to compare the features of two automobiles.
of effective and ineffective comparisons in their paragraphs.
Students wrote sample sentences on the board, and the
class worked through the grammar points with the teacher,
which provided additional opportunities for them to hear
and produce focus in structures used to express contrast.
When integrating pronunciation into the writing
process, the process moves from a wider emphasis on the
task to a narrower emphasis on the pronunciation point
needed to complete the task. The advantage is that students
are already familiar with the content and have more
resources to attend to the form.
Because discussion of similarities and differences is so
common in language classrooms, opportunities to integrate
focus naturally into speaking activities extend far beyond
VOL. 12 NO. 2
the writing course. For example, teachers can incorporate
focus in pre- and postlistening and reading questions to
highlight contrasts, or in grammar practice to highlight
comparative structures.
Conclusion
Although pronunciation instruction can be sensibly
integrated into many types of ESL/EFL classes, it is
particularly relevant to classes where speaking is central. An
old truism about spoken language is that the way some-
thing is said is frequently more important than what is
said. The way something is said obviously includes such
things as vocabulary connotations, pragmatics of speech
acts, and effective use of coherence. But it also must
include pronunciation, which, when inadequate, has been
implicated as a major factor in comprehensibility problems.
We have shown ways in which effective use of pronun-
ciation features is crucial for effective spoken communica-
tion. Words must be recognized if listeners are to process
speech. Speech is processed more easily if speakers chunk
information in expected ways. Intonation is essential to
management of conversational goals. Important cues about
given and new information and about categories being
contrasted with a topic are signaled by sentence focus.
Other areas could easily be added to this list, such as the
importance of shorter and longer syllables in creating
spoken English rhythm. Awareness of how these and other
pronunciation issues impact speaking can be enhanced
through awareness building and explicit instruction. Such
instruction is more likely to be productive when students
can see how pronunciation improvement helps them
communicate in English more effectively.
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Authors
John M. Levis is assistant professor of TESL and applied linguistics
in the Department of English at Iowa State University, in the
United States, where he teaches ESL/EFL teaching methods and
linguistics. His research interests include the intelligibility of spoken
language and the integration of pronunciation into oral
communication curricula.
Linda Grant teaches applied linguistics at Georgia State University,
and has taught ESL at Georgia Tech and Emory University, in the
United States. She is the author of Well Said: Pronunciation for
Clear Communication (Heinle & Heinle, 2001), and writes,
presents, and consults in her area of special interest—integrating
pronunciation with speaking and listening.
TESOL JOURNAL 19