Michael Burri, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia

At the 2017 TESOL Convention in Seattle, Judy Gilbert announced that it was to be her last year to attend. That represents, of course, an extraordinary milestone, given her tireless advocacy on behalf of pronunciation teaching and learning over the last four decades or so. At the 2018 TESOL Convention in Chicago, many of her friends and colleagues gathered to pay tribute to her invaluable lifelong work. This article includes some their testimonials.

Marsha Chan’s testimonial reflects well something of the impact that Judy Gilbert has had on so many of us:

We all have people whom we look up to as role models, to teach, enlighten, and guide us. Judy Gilbert has made a deep impression on me as a pronunciation teacher. Field testing the manuscript for Judy’s first edition of Clear Speech in the early 1980s in Beijing broadened my understanding of the importance of suprasegmentals. As a “mother of pronunciation teaching,” Judy has had a significant impact on teachers and learners worldwide. She is a great advocate of teaching pronunciation to learners of all proficiency levels, and in providing English teachers of all language backgrounds the tools to teach pronunciation. To augment features of the spoken word invisible in the written word, she taught us to stretch vowels with rubber bands, hear intonation with kazoos, and rise on the peak vowel. Through many decades in TESOL and CATESOL, our paths have intertwined. In each collaboration—whether a PCI, an InterSection, a colloquium, or a personal or online discussion—I’ve felt honored to be associated with Judy as a learner and a colleague.

Colleen Meyers’s haiku further heralds Judy’s longstanding efforts to enhance the place of pronunciation in the L2 classroom:

Pronunciation
From orphan to beloved child (beloved should be said with 2 syllables here)
All because of you

It is an understatement to say that Judy Gilbert is a pronunciation expert and authority, yet she has also been an inspiration, motivator, and friend to many of us at TESOL. As Tracey Derwing pointed out,

Judy Gilbert has inspired thousands of language teachers directly through her pronunciation workshops. Countless more have been positively affected by her publications, which offer superb advice for instructors who don’t know where to start. Judy has a knack for making difficult concepts highly accessible, motivating teachers to incorporate pronunciation instruction into their classes. I met Judy at TESOL [2002] in Salt Lake City at a pronunciation panel. At the intermission Judy invited me to join an international online community of pronunciation practitioners and researchers. Since then, I have admired her integrity and her inclusiveness. She persuaded the president of TESOL to devote a keynote to pronunciation in 2011 and invited me to deliver it. To get more bang for Judy’s buck, I asked three younger scholars to share the stage. Judy has created a community through kindness, ingenuity, and a vision for learners and teachers alike.

The following haiku, composed by John and Greta Levis, and the reflections throughout this article show well the regard we all hold Judy Gilbert in:

Visionary views
Esteems experts and newbies
Super-connecter

Having given countless presentations and workshops, as well as published teaching materials of outstanding quality, Judy Gilbert is seen by many as a master teacher. Linda Grant’s words highlight Judy’s pedagogical competence:

Judy’s finely crafted editions of Clear Speech speak for themselves and demonstrate a master teacher’s full combination of passion, artistry, intelligence, and effectiveness. The texts attest to a deep understanding of classroom dynamics and how students learn, an ability to communicate complex concepts in an accessible way, and a staunch commitment to the success of her students. Over the last thirty-plus years, these classic texts have moved the teaching of pronunciation forward immeasurably. And like any first-class master teacher, Judy has been a dedicated master learner. In her effort to stay current and adjust her teaching materials as the field has grown, she has created active communities for the sharing of ideas that have benefitted us all. A thousand thanks!

Lynn Henrichsen’s haiku and observations capture well both Judy’s unique pedagogical approach and her phenomenal impact on language teachers:

Judy and kazoo
Have been teaching me and you
Since 1982

It is not uncommon for teachers to say that pronunciation teaching is boring. That is definitely not the case with Judy Gilbert. She exemplifies the joy and fun of it all, as Donna Brinton knows:

We are all too familiar with recognized experts who take themselves seriously and see no humor in their profession. But as we all know, this is most definitely not the case with Judy. We are, after all, talking about that consummate professional who never takes center stage without a kazoo and a rubber band, who is self-deprecating to the max, and whose off-the-cuff quips sometimes take those of us with a slightly more serious bent an extra moment or two to process. My own fondest memories are the travel photos she shows in her talks (Judy sees pronunciation everywhere) and the “From the Literary Corner” extracts she posts to an invitational pronunciation e-list which are typically full of humor. One example: In response to a New York Times article entitled “How Dwarf Mongooses Respond to New Immigrants,” Judy comments,“This New York Times article may seem off-topic, but it amused me as I think we are part of the animal kingdom.”

Many of the aforementioned aspects have shaped Judy’s distinguished reputation as a leader in our field. Someone that knows how influential Judy has been over the years is Tamara Jones:

In 2015, I had the pleasure of copresenting “Pronunciation as a Faster Lane to Secondary ESOL Success” with Judy Gilbert at TESOL in Toronto. Before the session began, I was passing out kazoos and rubber bands and chatting with some of the audience members. I asked one of them if she was a secondary ESOL teacher, and she said, “Oh no, I am just here to see Judy Gilbert. She’s awesome.”To me, this exchange perfectly sums up the far-reaching impact Judy Gilbert has had on our field. She has been at the forefront of a movement that has sought to make the theories of pronunciation instruction accessible to all ELT professionals. Her textbooks, Clear Speech (Gilbert, 2012a) and Clear Speech from the Start (Gilbert, 2012b), are best-sellers. Her groundbreaking Prosody Pyramid (Gilbert, 2008) encapsulates the interconnectedness of suprasegmentals while still being easy for a nonlinguist to read. Her New School presentation on YouTube, “Teaching Pronunciation: Seven Essential Concepts,” has been viewed almost one million times. She is a respected authority around the world on teaching pronunciation and published by both TESOL and IATEFL. She was even chosen as one of TESOL’s Top 50 at 50 in 2016. To me, however, it seems that Judy Gilbert’s focus has always been the classroom teacher and his or her students. She has labored for a lifetime to advocate for more pronunciation instruction in all of our lessons, and so I would agree, she is awesome!

The following haiku, written by Bill Acton, mirrors Tamara Jones’ testimonial:

To Gilbert glory
O highest attestations
Spring from rubber bands

Many TESOLers may not know that Judy was one of the driving forces behind the founding of the Speech, Pronunciation, and Listening Interest Section (SPLIS). Her passion and determination from 1989–1998 were instrumental in leading to the establishment of our interest section. After the inception of SPLIS, she served as the interest section’s historian for 19 years. Judy has also maintained a strong connection with IATEFL, which is one of the reasons that the IATEFL Pronunciation Special Interest Group and SPLIS have a close, mutually beneficial relationship. Marnie Reed’s summary attests to Judy’s ability of bringing people together to increase the visibility of pronunciation:

To borrow a term from her 2014 As We Speak article “A Short (Fierce) History of How SPLIS Came To Be,” Judy Gilbert has been a fierce advocate for recognition of pronunciation and its rightful place as an integral component of ESL/EFL teaching. As the SPLIS historian, Judy credits IATEFL, TESOL’s counterpart in Britain, and its Pronunciation Special Interest Group with inspiring her to encourage a group of dedicated TESOL members to advocate for the formation of a new interest section. Three years in the making, the Speech Pronunciation Interest Section (SPIS) was approved at the 1997 annual convention in Orlando, Florida and debuted in 1998. Expanded in 2003 to reflect the separate and significant role of listening, SPLIS proudly boasts worldwide membership.

Laura Sicola’s haiku sums up Judy’s leading role in establishing pronunciation within TESOL and within the wider scope of applied linguistics:

We thank you, Judy
The original SPLISer
An inspiration

As these testimonials and haiku demonstrate, Judy’s passion and dedication has been integral in bringing pronunciation instruction back into the classroom. The TESOL Convention will not be the same without Judy in attendance, but her legacy will live on in the many teachers she has inspired; in the SPLIS community she has helped establish; and in her publications, rubber bands, and kazoos used in classrooms around the world. Thank you, Judy, from all of us at TESOL for the many contributions, the friendship, and the inspiration you have provided!

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Marsha Chan, Colleen Meyers, Tracey Derwing, John and Greta Levis, Linda Grant, Lynn Henrichsen, Donna Brinton, Tamara Jones, Marnie Reed, Bill Acton, and Laura Sicola for their contributions to this article.

References

Gilbert, J. (2008). Teaching pronunciation: Using the prosody pyramid. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Gilbert, J. (2012a). Clear speech (4th ed.). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Gilbert, J. (2012b). Clear speech from the start (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Michael Burri is a lecturer in TESOL at the University of Wollongong, Australia, and a visiting scholar at Osaka Jogakuin University, Japan. He has taught and conducted research in a variety of contexts in Australia, Japan, and Canada. His research interests include pronunciation teaching, second language teacher education, context-sensitive pedagogy, and nonnative-English-speaking teacher (NNEST) issues. Michael served as TESOL’s Speech, Pronunciation, and Listening Interest Section chair (2012–2013), and in 2015 he was the recipient of the TESOL Award for an Outstanding Paper on NNEST Issues.